-International Business Times   Consider this: There are 400 million Indians with no access to workplace benefits, such as social security, health insurance or unemployment insurance, a number higher than the population of the United States and Canada combined, according to a Delhi-based group of economic researchers. So, as the United States grapples with growing income inequality, it takes a country like India to put some of those economic and working realities into...

-The Hindustan Times   New Delhi: A group of young engineers have formulated an environment friendly way of reusing compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) used in households at a cost of Rs. 1. Led by engineers Shubham Manocha, 19, and Shivinder Singh Chandok, 20 - students of National Power Training Institute - the project ‘Prajwal' aims at mobilising the Resident Welfare Associations of various colonies of the city to collect used CFLs. The students...

-The Business Standard   Universal health scheme on the cards; Spend on the sector likely to be raised The Union Budget is likely to announce the first of the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government's social welfare schemes for the health sector - the National Health Assurance Mission. The programme will provide universal health care and offer comprehensive health insurance for the poor. The Budget could also, sources say, propose the government's mission-mode...

-The Hindu   Salt workers toil under inhuman conditions to create the ingredient that converts a tasteless lump of calories into consumable tasty food Salt has played an iconic role in our freedom struggle, symbolised by the great salt satyagraha of 1933, led by Mahatma Gandhi at Dandi. Every child in India knows about this but how many know that a similar satyagraha was led in the Madras Presidency (now Tamil Nadu) by...

-The Hindu   We need freeways, but we also need forests. Crimes against women have been constantly in the news. But crimes against nature remain largely unreported. Given the current climate, with the Intelligence Bureau claiming that non-governmental organisations like the crusading international environmental group Greenpeace, are detrimental to India's progress, and with the ubiquitous ‘foreign hand' making a serendipitous comeback, such crimes are likely to become invisible, noticed only by those who have...