-PTI NEW DELHI: Only 48 per cent of Indian adults have bank accounts and nearly half of them lie dormant, says a report. According to a nation-wide survey on financial behaviour, India has the highest account dormancy rate even more than countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The survey compiled by the Financial Inclusion Insights programme, operated by global strategic research consultancy InterMedia and supported by the Bill & Melinda...

-The Telegraph Differences with the Prime Minister's Office appear to have held up key schemes of the women and child development (WCD) ministry announced in the budget five months ago. Among the measures stalled is the "one-stop rape crisis centres", christened Nirbhaya centres after the 2012 Delhi bus rape victim and seen as a pet project of Maneka Gandhi. The finance ministry had approved Rs 500 crore for the plan but, with the...

-The Indian Express The recent proposal by the National Commission for Women to legalise prostitution has opened up an old debate. It is a misnoMer that legalisation would lead to improving the lives of women in prostitution by way of reduced harassment by the police and provision of healthcare facilities. Advocates of legalisation should first examine the experience of countries where prostitution has been legalised. The Mere fact that licensing has...

-The Hindu The clean-up of the plant is pending due to legal disputes Thirty years after India's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, contamination owing to the leakage of poisonous gas from the Union Carbide pesticide factory continues to affect residents. The leak of 40 tonnes of methyl isocyanate on the intervening night of December 2 and 3, 1984, killed thousands of people in its immediate aftermath and continued to kill people in the...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The runaway growth in states of subsidised solar pumps, which provide quality energy at near-zero marginal cost, can pose a bigger threat of groundwater over-exploitation than free power has done so far. The best way to meet this threat is by paying farMers to "grow" solar power as a remunerative cash crop. Doing so can reduce pressure on aquifers, cut the subsidy burden on electricity companies, reduce...