The Guinness Book of world record would have been happy to include this feat by a surgeon on January 7 in Bihar's Araria district - 53 sterilization operations on females in two hours with the help of unqualified staff in Kaparfora Government Middle School that did not have basic amenities like running water or sterilizing equipment. Instead, the Supreme Court on Monday issued notices to the Union and state governments on...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today issued notices to all states and Union territories asking them to explain unsafe and unhygienic sterilisation drives in violation of an earlier order for safe procedures. The move came on a PIL by a health rights activist who alleged inhuman sterilisations continued in rural areas in “reckless disregard” of the lives of poor women, especially in Bihar. In one case, 53 women were sterilised in two hours...

Do dollars dictate dissent? Are agendas altered as advised? Government statements related to these questions - specifically, the foreign funding of non-government organisations (NGOs) involved in the protests against nuclear power at Kudankulam - generated much discussion.  The uproar is over, and Kudankulam will soon be operational. However, many wider issues remain, and these merit consideration. Among these, two significant ones are the role of NGOs - or, more specifically, civil...

-The Hindu Moving towards major reforms, the Centre is in the process of rolling out a universal health coverage package in at least one district in each State on an experimental basis. This would include a clearly defined basket of services to those who come to any public health facility for treatment or free supply of generic drugs, doing away with user charges and upgrading public health infrastructure right from the primary...

Naseema Akhtar, 38, worries that her daily treks to collect clean water from the mountain springs around her village of Bonpora, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, are getting longer. She is already doing more than seven km every day. "The higher up you go, the cleaner the water is likely to be, but there is a limit to how far one can climb to fetch a pitcher of water," she told IPS....