By selectively borrowing habits from the West, the urban Indian has worsened his chances with cancer. Doctors say that while the city-bred Indian has willingly adopted a western diet, lapping up high-fat foods and shunning high-fibre content, he or she hasn't picked up the healthy western attitude of detecting and treating cancer early.  The end-result, as the India's Million Death Study (MDS) reported on Thursday shows, is that urban Indians are...

-The Economic Times With its draft report alleging a coal scam, duly leaked to the media, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) is making a habit of choosing sensation over sense. Its allegation of loss to the exchequer in allocation of 2G spectrum colours the public discourse on the subject, but was discarded by the CBI court in the telecom case as the basis for a formal charge.  Its assumption that the...

Punctuality audit ordered by the Chief Secretary of the Delhi government last year opened the Pandora’s Box on poor attendance records of government officials. Documents obtained under an RTI filed by Pratidhi show that nodal departments had large numbers of their staff members missing, on most surprise checks. Chief secretary P K Tripathi had ordered the audit last June after writing to heads of all departments that they must conduct at...

The Centre on Monday revised the wage rate under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and has decided to amend the Act to remove the existing disparity in minimum wage, even as the matter is scheduled to come up before the Supreme Court on April 9. The revision in the wage rate indexed to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labour (CPIAL) will come into effect on April 1...

Trying—and failing—to live on the govt’s definition of ‘not poor’ Dietetics Of Poverty     Three cups of tea, adding up to about 150 calories     Two slices of bread (100 calories)     Two pieces of kulcha with chhole (about 425 calories)     Bread and tea hardly contain any nutrients. Milk may provide some calcium.     Near-starvation diets, with hardly any vitamins or minerals, can lead to a breakdown of muscles and weight loss over a...