-The Hindu     Among basic services, sanitation - public toilets in particular - ranks as national Capital's worst public service Despite an overall improvement in the quality of life it offers its citizens, Delhi is home to large inequalities in access to basic services, the Capital's latest Human Development Report, which was released by Vice-President Hamid Ansari and Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on Saturday, has revealed. Seven years after coming out with its first...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: There are no uniform rules for female employees in government departments and organizations and they are treated by varying yardsticks when it comes to essential benefits like maternity and child care leave (CCL). Dismayed after finding that maternity leave can vary from 90 to 135 days, a parliamentary panel has suggested that all government departments and organizations should ensure 180 days of leave for their women...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Delhiites are happiest with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) followed by the electricity department and unhappiest with the Delhi Police and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) among all the public services. This was revealed during focus group discussions done as part of a perception survey done for the Delhi Human Development Report 2013. In the survey, people were asked to rate their dealings with...

-The Hindu The devastating landslips were caused by the undercutting of fragile hillsides for highways rather than by dams, which actually helped mitigate the floods The natural calamity of June 16 through 19 that devastated the whole of Uttarakhand and large areas of Himachal Pradesh and western Uttar Pradesh - an area of almost 20,000 sq.km. - was one of extremely rare severity among all the hydro-meteorological disasters to have struck India. Intense...

-The Telegraph Two Union government health agencies colluded with a foreign entity to conduct a mass vaccination campaign on thousands of girls in India four years ago, violating medical ethics and national laws, a parliamentary committee said today. The parliamentary standing committee on health and family welfare has blamed the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Drugs Controller General of India for collaborating with the US-based Program for Appropriate Technologies...