Each day, one thousand women die in childbirth and one million people become infected with sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including 7,000 cases of HIV. Yet these numbers are preventable, experts insist, when countries possess the resources and willpower to address and deal with them. Dignitaries and high-level officials gathered this week to discuss reproductive health commodity security (RHCS), or, simply put, ensuring that people have access to essentials of reproductive health...

-The Economic Times   At a time when the social media is said to have spawned revolutions across the world, including our very own Anna Hazare movement, the government looks set to use the medium as a governance tool. The department of information technology has framed guidelines for social media interaction with government organizations to optimize use of the popular communication tool to connect with citizens. The guidelines - Stressing on issues like professionalism,...

Vidarbha Civil Society Collective and Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) have raised strong objections to provisions in the National Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill 2011 tabled in Parliament on Wednesday. They demanded that the Bill be redrafted to safeguard interests of the dryland farmers and other landowners. "The Bill has ignored all suggestions made by the civil society and farmer advocacy groups. A month ago the rural development minister Jairam...

The Centre’s proposed land acquisition law will include a provision to create a land bank, one of the key demands made by Mamata Banerjee. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh will meet the Bengal chief minister in Calcutta tomorrow and inform her about the provisions of the redrafted bill, which the Union cabinet is to take up on Monday. Mamata has been advocating the creation of a land bank that would specify areas...

Anna Hazare's chief aide Arvind Kejriwal was slapped a notice by the Income Tax department asking him to pay dues of more than Rs 9 lakh a week before the Gandian was to launch his fast and at a time when Team Anna was engaged in a high voltage clash with the government. The I-T department -- that has still not accepted Kejriwal's resignation from the Indian Revenue Service tendered...