-Hindustan Times On World Population Day today, the ministry of health and family welfare should be congratulated for committing to enlarge the scope of contraceptive choices to rejuvenate the family planning programme in the country. This move fulfils the long awaited need for expanding the basket of choice in the public healthcare system. To deliver quality family planning services in a spirit of voluntarism and within a rights and accountability framework, the...

-Hindustan Times When right to information activist Guru Prasad Shukla was beaten to death by fellow villagers last month, he became the 39th person to lay down his life for exercising the transparency law in its first decade. Another 275 people have reportedly been assaulted or harassed for invoking the law to raise uncomfortable questions before those in power. The 50-year-old Shukla had sought information about development work in his village and...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: For lakhs of travellers, the New Delhi and Old Delhi railway stations may be just dots on the city’s map, but for thousands of children, they are ‘home.’ It is here where the police find most of the children who go missing.   As per records, at least 3,321 children were rescued from the two stations in the last three years. This year till June, the railway police rescued...

There is some positive news about national progress in sanitation and drinking water. A newly released report from UNICEF and WHO informs us that the country has witnessed 31 percent reduction in open defecation since 1990. This means 394 million Indians no more defecate in the open. The bad news, however, is that the progress in ‘population not practising open defecation’ among the poorest has been slower during the last 20...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Delhi has the highest density of hospitals in the country and more beds available for patients than the national average but it is impossible to get treatment in government-run hospitals when needed. The city’s rising population and the many thousands who come from other states seeking treatment have virtually put government hospitals, which offer cheaper care, out of reach for most people. Delhi has 976 registered hospitals and clinics...