-The Hindu For any law to truly liberate those trapped in manual scavenging, their numbers must first be established by a comprehensive survey Everybody declares with a full heart, and in a low voice, that it is a national shame. From Manmohan Singh and Pratibha Patil to Mukesh Ambani and Aamir Khan, the last mentioned a new convert to the Dalit cause, there is no dearth of people queuing up to take...

-Outlook Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said public health system in the country had "collapsed", noting that even poorer countries like Bangladesh and Kenya have superior health indicators. In a candid assessment of the country's health sector, Ramesh also said 70 per cent of the health expenditure is met from private sources, making it a "unique" country. This was the "single most important" reason for indebtedness in rural areas, he...

-Outlook Only six states in the country, including Maharashtra and Kerala, are likely to achieve the Millenium Development Goal (MDG) on reducing child mortality by 2015, a report said today. Except Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal, other parts of the country are unlikely to achieve MDG 4, which aims to reduce Under-Five Mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015, unless some key issues are addressed, These observations were...

-The Hindu Kerala’s Kudumbashree network and the rural employment guarantee scheme have converged to provide a unique model of empowerment An incredible story of empowerment has been unfolding in the wake of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) programme in the State of Kerala. This is the story of how a socially engineered convergence of the scheme with panchayati raj institutions and the State sponsored community network of poor...

-Mainstream Weekly Dr Binayak Sen, an internationally renowned medical practitioner and social activist (a leading figure in the People’s Union for Civil Liberties), was incarcerated in Chhattisgarh and held in detention in Raipur having been branded as a Maoist for his activities in defence of poor tribals in the State. He is now out on bail. The following is the text of the Arvind Narayan Das Memorial Lecture he delivered in...