-The Hindu A 2012 WHO study ranks India third — behind Myanmar and Bangladesh — among countries that fail to provide health cover to people. A 2011 study reported in The Lancet on ‘Healthcare and equity’ confirms this: every year, at least 39 million people here fall into poverty due to private out-of-pocket health expenditure. A vast majority of Indians do not have access to healthcare or essential drugs. By the...

-The Hindu An anthology of independent evaluations of MGNREGA shows that it has provided income security, improved health, narrowed the gender gap and created useful assets   In the midst of the debates that prevail in this country over the feasibility of the world’s largest public works programme, the MGNREGA Sameeksha — an anthology of independent research studies and analysis on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, from 2006-2012 — is...

-The Hindu Activists brand them illegal Bangladeshi migrants Ninety-eight migrant labourers were dragged out of a train and assaulted, allegedly by Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) members, at Mandya in Karnataka late on Wednesday night. The activists terrorised the labourers hailing from West Bengal, Orissa, rajasthan, Bihar and other States for nearly two hours before dragging them out, claiming they were “illegal Bangladeshis.” The labourers were heading to Mangalore on the Yeshwantpur-Kannur Express. Scores of...

-The Economic Times A presidential pardon can be a fraught proposition with the waiting time for death row convicts ranging from three years to 20 years. Gurmeet Singh from Pipariya village in Uttar Pradesh has been on death row for the last 20 years after being convicted for the murder of 13 family members. Twenty-six years since that dark night when he committed the crime, Gurmeet continues to wait for a decision...

-The Hindu Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, espousing the cause of Muslims, has knocked at the doors of the Supreme Court seeking compensation for the community’s youth who were incarcerated in jails for years as accused in bomb blast cases but were let off subsequently. A Bench of Justices T. S. Thakur and Ibrahim Kalifulla, after hearing senior counsel Amarendra Saran, agreed to examine the plight of such youth who were jailed for six or...