-The Hindustan Times One does not have to agree with his views to be intrigued by the possibilities opened up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's emergence as communicator/harangue-master in chief. Public conversations about who we are and who we want to be are key to the vitality of our democracy, and leaders can seed those conversations when they speak out their own views. When I hear people in the Delhi metro...

-The United Nations One in three known victims of human trafficking is a child, and girls and women are particularly targeted and forced into "modern slavery," according to the 2014 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, released today by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna. "Unfortunately, the report shows there is no place in the world where children, women and men are safe from human trafficking," said...

-The Hindu Tamil Nadu has come to realise in a most tragic manner the high mortality risk faced by preterm babies (those born before 37 completed weeks of gestation), and its unfinished task of saving these lives. Of the 13 neonates who died recently in district hospitals in Dharmapuri and Salem, five were preterm. Both preterm and low birth weight babies have died of the usual causes, such as respiratory...

-The Indian Express Oorugonda/ Warangal: Twenty -two kilometres from Warangal, a narrow road from National Highway 202 leads to Oorugonda, a village of around a thousand farmers in Atmakur mandal. An eerie silence hangs around it, with a few middle-aged men sitting under a tree looking up inquisitively at visitors. They are not done grieving for 40-year-old Modanti Krishnamma. Last week, she killed herself after the cotton crop she and her husband...

-The Hindu A survey commissioned by the Ministry of Human Resource Development simplistically records poverty and academic disinterest as major reasons for children dropping out of school. A survey commissioned by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, in September shows that out of the estimated 20.41 crore children in the age group of 6-13 in India, an estimated 60.41 lakh (2.97 per cent) are out of school. This proportion of out-of-school children...