-The Indian Express New Delhi: Vegetables are the noble folk of food world, loved equally by doctors and grandmothers. Vegetarians live off them and meat-eaters are told to live off them. But in Delhi, under every crunchy leaf of radish or the shiny brinjal hide dangerous amounts of pesticides that can slowly kill, shows a new study by JNU. Pritha Chatterjee and Aniruddha Ghosal report how growers, consumers and the authorities may...

-Economic and Political Weekly The key to improving the quality of healthcare services in India and reducing costs at the same time can be found by enacting legislation which lays down minimum standards of patient care. In the absence of such standards and the reluctance of health insurance companies to standardise either price or quality, healthcare services continue to be expensive and of doubtful quality. Developing standards of patient care by...

-The Hindu High fluoride levels in water in 14,132 habitations in 19 States With drinking water in 14,132 habitations in 19 States still containing fluoride above the permissible levels, the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry fears that a huge population is at risk of serious health conditions such as skeletal fluorosis. The Ministry has now urged the Drinking Water and Sanitation Ministry to ensure the supply of safe drinking water in these...

-Economic and Political Weekly India's scheduled tribes are among the most deprived socio-economic groups and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has great potential in tribal areas. While the Andhra Pradesh government has made an effort to ensure implementation of the scheme in the scheduled areas, the gap between administrative orders and the grass-roots level is wide. This article lists measures that could radically improve implementation of the scheme...

-The Indian Express Although the prevalence of sexual violence in India is the lowest in the world (8.5 per cent in 2013), it affects 27.5 million women in the country. Rapes reported to the police as sexual violence surged from 39 per day to 93 per day in 2013. In Uttar Pradesh alone, five rapes occurred in 36 hours. Even these are underestimations, for two reasons. One is the exclusion of...