Around two in five households in Kolkata don't have ownership or tenancy documents, while one in four live in the fear of being evicted without legal notice.  In Mumbai, 30% households don't have ownership or tenancy documents and one in five feel insecure against eviction, says the UN's Millennium Development Goals Report, 2012.  Released on Monday, the report says the most visible violation of housing rights faced by the urban poor today...

-The Hindu The six-member panel constituted to review the cartoons used in social sciences textbooks of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has ordered the deletion of several cartoons and words that it says are either “ambiguous”, negative or show politicians and bureaucrats in an ‘incorrect way. Among the material that gets the chop: an R.K. Laxman cartoon from the 1950s showing Nehru telling France and Portugal (represented as monkeys,...

Actual targets remain far from desired rate With one maternal death reported every 10 minutes, India is likely to miss the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) related to maternal health, a latest United Nations report says. While there is an improvement from maternal death in every six minutes in 2010 to 10 minutes now, the MDG target in this respect is unlikely to be met, the report said. At present, the Maternal Mortality...

-The Telegraph Unesco has declared the Western Ghats a World Heritage site, capping a six-year campaign, but another Indian nomination on the “hill forts of Rajasthan” tripped because of inadequacies in documentation. The recognition for the ghats came despite a recommendation against their inclusion by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), an advisory panel that assesses entries for special ecological zones. The ICUN concluded that the five states through which the...

The government and the MCI dither on a proposed course to provide better primary health care in villages. On February 27, the Delhi High Court slapped contempt notices on the Union Health Secretary and the Chairperson of the Medical Council of India (MCI) for their non-compliance with its order of November 10, 2010, to initiate measures to introduce a “Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC)” course of three and a half...