-Livemint.com States, including Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Uttarakahand and West Bengal, saw a fall in percentage of men consuming alcohol New Delhi: Tobacco use across all the states have dropped in the past 10 years but alcohol consumption in south Indian states along with Sikkim and Tripura in the northeast have increased, according to the initial findings of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) released on Tuesday. Increase in alcohol consumption...

-Livemint.com It’s time to look at the deleterious environmental impact of subsidies so as to attain correct pricing of resources A few days before Delhi’s odd-even rule—a road rationing scheme in which odd- and even-numbered cars were allowed to ply on roads on alternate days—was to be implemented, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia appeared on a television channel to answer questions on the rule. During the show, Sisodia admitted that the...

  A French journalist once wrote: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps the same can be said about nutritional status of children in West Bengal at present in comparison to the past. At the time when Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, was entertaining private capital in Singur and Nandigram, the rate of undernutrition was quite high in his state. A little less than...

-The Hindu The audacious and unprovoked attack last week on a group of activists who held a peaceful rally in Rajasthan can only be explained in terms of the rising resentment on the part of the ruling class towards civil society organisations demanding accountability. Flagged off by social activist Aruna Roy, the Jawabdehi Yatra was aimed to spread awareness about government schemes and raise the issue of accountability in their implementation....

-The Indian Express Denied access to public road for funeral procession, Dalit mourners helpless as police forcibly take bodies, bury them. Madurai: WITH A straight face, M Karthikeyan says his grandparents, who died recently, received “the distinction of a state burial”. “They were buried by police, only the 21-gun salute was missing,” said the 30-year-old Dalit from Nagapattinam. Behind the dark humour, is a chilling story of how caste divisions in a Tamil Nadu...