-The Times of India BANGALORE: Karnataka, often called a "progressive state", has the highest dropout rate among Muslim students. On an average, 50,000 students from the community dropout of school each year, a majority of them at the high school level, according to a survey done by the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). The average dropout rate is 6.2% compared to the national average of less than 5%. "The statistics show a worrisome trend,"...

-The Hindu The prohibition imposed on bicycle riding and use of non-motorised transport in 174 designated roads of Kolkata during most hours of the workday or round-the-clock is undemocratic, environmentally retrograde and out of sync with modern urban transport planning. At a time when global cities are thinking beyond the car and popularising shared bicycle systems, the law enforcement machinery in West Bengal's capital has chosen to go the opposite...

-The Hindu Monthly season tickets and passengers in suburban trains exempted from hike While exempting almost half of its passengers from additional burden, the railways have increased fares by roughly 2 per cent to offset increased fuel expenditure. However, those travelling in Duronto will have to pay as much as Rajdhani passengers with effect from Monday. The railways have also increased freight charges by 1.7 per cent across the board from next Thursday. With...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Getting better is getting cheaper. The new drug price policy, the first after 18 years and expected to fully come into effect over the next six months, will reduce average middle class household spend on medicines by over 20%. For some crucial medicines, savings could be as much as 50% or more. The drug price regulator is crunching numbers to measure the impact of the new pricing...

-The Hindu When a death sentence is given to satisfy the "collective conscience of the community," it raises troubling questions about the fairness of the trial The verdict of death for the bestial gang rape in Delhi last December is based on Supreme Court judgments, which stipulate that capital punishment will be imposed in "the rarest of rare" cases, where the community's "collective conscience is so shocked that it will expect the...