-The Indian Express The rights-based approach departs from the ‘assurance-based approach’ of the new National Health Policy, which essentially perpetuates the status quo, explains The Indian Express. Since the time the Mental Health Bill was introduced in Rajya Sabha in 2013, decriminalisation of suicide has been its calling card. However, the legislation travels beyond just that colonial era relic, assuming a rights-based approach to mental healthcare, and creating circumstances for removal of...

-PTI The Gujarat government should build separate crematoriums for Dalits in those villages where the community is still facing problems, the Scheduled Castes Welfare Committee of the Gujarat Assembly has suggested. The Assembly panel, which serves as the watchdog of welfare schemes being run by various government departments for SCs in Gujarat, also recommended reservation system for the recruitment in self financed colleges in Gujarat. These suggestions were made in two of the...

-Livemint.com The focus should be more on making the prime minister’s crop insurance scheme a success than demanding farm loans waivers from banks Last week, the Indian National Congress at the Maharashtra assembly submitted a breach of privilege notice against State Bank of India chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya for “insulting farmers and the House” by her remarks on farm loan waiver. The leader of the opposition in the state assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil,...

-The Indian Express Higher education in India is failing. Overhauling the system can salvage it Let me start with a blunt statement: India’s higher education is in general a decrepit, dilapidated system, it’s afflicted by a deep malaise. The National Knowledge Commission—Report to the Nation (2006-9) put it only a bit more mildly: “There is a quiet crisis in higher education in India which runs deep”. Three widely acknowledged criteria for judging an...

-TheWire.in In the caste and class-unequal region, where a cashless economy is a distant dream, there is some doubtful support for demonetisation, but mostly concrete hostility. Jhansi: Almost a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the scrapping of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, the socio-economic fabric of Bundelkhand – one of the poorest regions in central India comprising parts of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh – is slowly crumbling. The...