-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Conditional cash transfer instead of providing grains at subsidized rates to the poor under the Food Security Act can save at least Rs 30,000 crore annually, said Shanta Kumar, chairman of a panel set up to revamp the state-run Food Corporation of India (FCI). Kumar said linking cash transfer to conditions such as constructing toilets was one of the several options being considered to ensure every...

-Economic and Political Weekly The current regime seeks to reform labour laws with the understanding that these reforms will improve industrial growth and expand the possibilities of enterprise. However, there is already ample evidence from within India that this obsession with reforming labour law, particularly in the way the government has done it till now, will not take us any closer in creating more jobs or a healthy industrial sector. These...

-NDTV The Chhattisgarh government is guilty, at the least, of culpable homicide for the deaths of over a dozen women in government-run sterilisation camps in the last few days. But the government and in particular the Health Minister think they can escape from their own responsibility by arresting the doctor who did the operations and setting up a judicial enquiry. Really? You need a judicial enquiry to tell you that the targets you...

-The Indian Express Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala): Infant deaths are still stalking tribal hamlets in Kerala's Attappadi region, where the community's population has been falling alarmingly due to various factors. The recurring incidents of infant deaths have cast a shadow over the survival of tribals in Attappadi. A study had found that tribals formed 90 per cent of population in Attappadi in 1951, but the same was down to 42 per cent in...

-The Hindustan Times Raipur (Chhattisgarh): Eleven women have died and dozens more are in a critical condition after a government-run sterilisation programme in Chhattisgarh designed to control the country's billion-plus population went wrong, officials said on Tuesday. More than 50 women are seriously ill after suffering complications from the surgery in Bilaspur district over the weekend, authorities in Chhattisgarh said. "Reports of a drop in pulse, vomiting and other ailments started...