-Business Standard After Maggi, the quality of vegetables, milk and milk products sold at various places might also be tested for adulteration. The Department of Consumer Affairs is planning to approach the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to run a pilot project in this regard, starting from Delhi. Officials said the pilot might start in the next few months to check these edible items for adulteration. The presence of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The consumer affairs ministry is preparing a "strong" case against Nestle on the Maggi issue, which it will file in the national consumer forum. Sources said the ministry would file a petition on behalf of consumers, seeking damages from the multinational for selling an unsafe product, adopting unfair trade practices and running misleading advertisements. Consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan held a meeting with top officials...

-IPS News BETUL, India- Mamta Bai, 36, distinctly remembers the first time the police came to her village: it was December 2014 and her neighbour, Purva Bai, had just been beaten unconscious by her alcoholic husband, prompting Mamta to make a distress call to the nearest station. Once in the neighborhood, policemen pulled the abusive husband out of his home and asked the village women if they wanted him to be arrested. “Yes,”...

-The Indian Express It can be strengthened —by the collection of taxes at the local level, for instance. Democratic decentralisation, conceived two decades ago, seems to be a lost cause at first sight. Beyond lip service by politicians, neither panchayats nor municipalities have captured the public imagination as viable, responsive, accountable institutions of government. Just after the Karnataka panchayat elections, which ended on June 2, the continued disempowerment of local governments is...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Same-sex rapes by fellow prisoners trigger most jail suicides, the National Human Rights Commission has said in a report, swivelling the spotlight to the administration of prisons and the plight of inmates. While such abuses were hardly a secret to many, this is the first such official acknowledgement by a rights panel or government organisation. The study was prompted by the suicide of a suspect in the Delhi...