-The Hindu Chennai: There is accumulating Evidence in India that pollution and contamination are becoming a serious public health issue, which requires focussed strategies to mitigate. "Environment in India is not a lifestyle issue. The missing dimension in the environment debate is the public health debate. One way of getting a larger political focus for environmental issues would be to pitch it as a public health issue," said Jairam Ramesh, former Union...

-The United Nations States must be transparent about the nature of their electronic mass surveillance programmes, an independent United Nations counter-terrorism expert said today as he warned about the impact such measures might have on individuals' right to privacy. "States need to squarely confront the fact that mass surveillance programmes effectively do away with the right to online privacy altogether," Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights...

-The Hindu Business Line The number of people commuting between rural and urban areas and across geographies has risen dramatically In the last couple of decades, the number of people commuting between rural and urban areas on a daily basis has seen an explosive growth. This includes unskilled workers without a fixed place of work. According to the National Sample Survey Organisation, between 1993-94 and 2009-10, India saw a nearly fourfold increase (from...

-Outlook Washington: An Indian medical researcher has been awarded the US-based Institute of Medicine's (IOM) 2014 Sarnat Prize for his contributions to improving mental health care in developing countries. Vikram Patel yesterday was presented with the Sarnat Prize, which consists of a medal and USD 20,000, at IOM's annual meeting in Washington. "Through his research, Vikram Patel not only brought a largely unacknowledged problem - mental health disorders in developing nations - into...

-GRIST Media If hard work and enterprise inevitably made you prosperous, every rural woman would be a millionaire. These women have borne the brunt of the radical, often brutal transformation of rural India these past two decades. Our writers examine the hardships they continue to face as well as their remarkable vision to solve some of the greatest problems of our times such as food security, environmental justice and developing a...