-The Telegraph New Delhi: A leading cancer specialist has called on the government to investigate whether a "tobacco lobby" has influenced arms of the government to initiate action against public health organisations engaged in India's tobacco control efforts. Kailash Sharma, director of academics at the Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai, has cited leaked government and tobacco industry documents to seek a probe into whether a Union home ministry note allegedly depicting tobacco control...

-PTI Washington: Basu said from 2003 to 2011, India was growing typically over 8 per cent per annum. The year of global crisis, 2008, it dropped briefly to 6.8 per cent, but over 8 per cent growth had become the new norm for India. The downturn in India’s growth is “very worrying”, World Bank’s former chief economist Kaushik Basu said, underscoring that this is the “hefty price” the country had to pay...

-The Hindu An immediate stimulus is needed to regain the momentum to get India back to 8% growth The government’s move this past week to publish economic data for the April to June quarter of this year needs a look. The real growth of GDP, i.e. after removing the impact of inflation, was only 5.7%, much lower than expected. For the past six consecutive quarters, the growth rate has gone down steadily,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government has stated that safety standards in the cleaning of sewer and septic tanks are alarmingly low across the country in the wake of 10 people falling prey to cleaning sewers in a month in the capital. A review of the "Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013" (MS Act) has found that there is no information available about the cases...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Women engaged in farming have converged from across the country in the capital demanding a separate identity as "women farmers" with access to the same rights and entitlements as their male counterparts, besides land records classified according to gender. A key issue pertains to the ownership of land as patriarchy continues to deny women such rights which, in turn, blocks their access to subsidies and other inputs provided...