-The Hindu The perils of the system of rat-hole mining that thousands in Meghalaya routinely engage in were in stark focus over the past week. After a fruitless search that yielded no survivors or bodies in a flooded coal pit in the South Garo Hills, a rescue team of the National Disaster and Rescue Force has called off its operations. This means the 15 miners who were believed trapped underground are...

A cure for India’s health care ills is within reach provided there is political will In most developed — and many developing — countries today, a 12-year school education and universal health coverage (UHC) are the two primary responsibilities of the state. India has failed miserably on both counts. Let us look at some of the problems of medical and health care: • Fifty years ago, when there was no commercialisation of...

-The Indian Express   Pinki Pramanik’s ordeal must force us to rethink the notion that gender is rigidly bipolar The story of Pinki Pramanik and her partner can be pieced together like any other story of intimacy gone bad. After all, human beings invariably encounter pain and betrayal in intimate relationships, just as they encounter joy and desire. No relationship is free of power, whether produced by individual personalities or by social structures...

-The Hindu The population situation in Kerala is a fascinating area of study, says Dr. P.S. Nair, Professor and Head of the Department of Population Studies in the University of Botswana There are several billion reasons why each of us should be interested in the observation of the annual World Population Day (July 11). Kerala occupies a special place in demographic studies in India on account of it being the most densely...

Tuberculosis re-emerges as a major threat as new drug-resistant strains develop because of mismanagement of the DISEase. At the beginning of the year, doctors at Mumbai’s P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and Medical Research Centre reported that they had 12 patients infected with TDR-TB, or totally drug-resistant tuberculosis, a condition in which the TB bacilli is resistant to all first- and second-line drugs used in the conventional treatment of the DISEase. Panic...