-Scroll.in/ IndiaSpend.com Uttar Pradesh tops the list of under-five mortality. Despite recently revealed improvements, primitive sanitation is killing, retarding the growth or leaving susceptible to disease millions of Indian children, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of the latest available national health data. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Chhattisgarh had India’s highest under-five mortality, higher stunting (low height-for-age) rates and higher prevalence of diarrhoea due to lack of “improved sanitation” –...

-PTI The Delhi High Court today made it clear to the Centre that persons entitled under the public distribution system (PDS) scheme cannot be denied subsidised foodgrains. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Anu Malhotra said the “persons entitled under the scheme cannot be denied subsidised foodgrains” and it wanted to ensure that “not only the poor” but all those “eligible” should avail the benefits of the...

-TheWire.in Most technocratic interventions introduced in MGNREGA appear to be designed to aid administrators rather than for actually helping workers. In his 2017-18 Budget speech, finance minister Arun Jaitley asserted with great conviction that the ruling dispensation’s “initiative to geo-tag all MGNREGA assets” to put them “in public domain has established greater transparency”. In 2016-17, the rural development ministry started an initiative called ‘GeoMGNREGA’, under which it was proposed that all assets created under...

-The Hindu Business Line Frowns on India’s IP laws; New Delhi unfazed, says laws are TRIPS-compliant New Delhi: Expressing its disappointment with India for not making adequate changes in its IP laws and regulations despite announcing its National IPR policy last year, the US Trade Representative’s (USTR) office has once again placed the country in the ‘priority watch’ list in this year’s edition of the Special 301 report. “Almost a year after the...

-Frontline.in The British government, on the basis of an 1891 report on the subhuman living conditions of “Pariahs” by James H.A. Tremenheere, Acting Collector of Chengleput, assigned 12 lakh acres of land for distribution to the “depressed classes” of the Madras Presidency to empower them socially and economically. But more than 100 years later, much of this land is in the possession of non-Dalits, and the struggle to reclaim them has...