-The Telegraph New Delhi: The sale of drug combinations containing last-resort antibiotics is rising faster than overall antibiotics sales in India, health researchers have said in a study that also highlights the government's failure to stop the sale of irrational and unapproved antibiotic cocktails. While total antibiotics sales in India rose 26 per cent over a four-year period, says the study, there was a 174 per cent increase in the sales of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A last opportunity for untrained elementary school teachers to retain their jobs has put the spotlight on private schools. Most of the million-plus such teachers across the country teach in private institutes. Bengal too has come under unwelcome glare: it has 1.3 lakh untrained teachers, second only to Bihar, according to human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar. The dubious statistics came to light after the National Institute of Open...

-NDTV Jean Dreze's new book, a collection of essays called 'Sense and Solidarity - Jholawala Economics for Everyone', starts with a beautiful and moving description of what he sees from his office in Ranchi University at the crack of dawn: hundreds of informal sector coal-miners in Ranchi trudging miles with heavy loads of coal they have dug up, often from below the land from which they were forcibly displaced. Dreze quotes...

On the 148th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, cleanliness drives were officially organised across the country so as to promote Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. A few days before 2nd October, the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), released a report that attempts to connect the dots between sanitation and nutritional status of children. Please click here to access the survey report from NIN.   On...

-The Times of India VARANASI: A high-level official report on the recent violence and arson in Banaras Hindu University (BHU) has reportedly noted that proper and timely communication with protesting girl students by the varsity administration could have nipped the problem in the bud and prevented it from escalating. On Tuesday, the BHU vice-chancellor, too, ordered a probe into the incidents headed by a retired HC judge. UP chief secretary Rajiv Kumar had...