-The Hindu The prohibition imposed on bicycle riding and use of non-motorised transport in 174 designated roads of Kolkata during most hours of the workday or round-the-clock is undemocratic, environmentally retrograde and out of sync with modern urban transport planning. At a time when global cities are thinking beyond the car and popularising shared bicycle systems, the law enforcement machinery in West Bengal's capital has chosen to go the opposite...

-The Economic Times MUMBAI/ NEW DELHI: For almost eight months, 30-year-old Reena Sahani spurned inappropriate requests by her boss to meet him outside of work. He changed tack, loading her with more work to make her stay back late in office. Finally, emboldened by chats with a company-appointed counsellor, she lodged a complaint. Rooma Sircar, an IT executive, tolerated an innuendo of sexually explicit jokes by a senior male colleague for...

-Down to Earth   This defies logic. Despite rapid economic growth, India has often been placed below sub-Saharan African countries that have very high number of malnourished children. But the government has no data to clarify its position. In the first week of September, Parliament’s Committee on Estimates criticised the government, saying: “The committee is surprised to note that in the modern era of Information and Technology, there is no recent official...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Getting better is getting cheaper. The new drug price policy, the first after 18 years and expected to fully come into effect over the next six months, will reduce average middle class household spend on medicines by over 20%. For some crucial medicines, savings could be as much as 50% or more. The drug price regulator is crunching numbers to measure the impact of the new pricing...

-The Hindu If the Adani group is allowed to continue its development projects in Kutch simply by ‘compensating' for their ecological damage, the Centre will set a dangerous precedent that lets money power trump environmental regulations The Adani Group may be fined Rs.200 crore for a series of environmental violations committed by their waterfront development, port and power plant projects in the Mundra taluka of Kutch district. The waterfront development project, which...