-The Business Standard A cursory analysis of news channels shows that roughly one-third are just political vehicles or peddle influence for builders Last month the ministry of information and broadcasting decided to extend the June 30 deadline to digitise TV homes in the four metros. The new deadline is October 31. There are various reasons for the delay (“Digitisation delay is not a good sign”, June 22). The biggest, however, is cable...

The Bill to regulate medical education and govern human resource in health is a highly diluted version of the original draft. Distortions in the area of Human Resource for Health (HRH) are the root cause of many of the ills facing the health sector in India. Among them is the shortage of qualified medical professionals. The estimated density of 19 health workers (qualified and unqualified) per 10,000 population is nearly 25...

Regulations covering public health should override personal rights and the country cannot wait any more for a good public health law. The health care industry, including institutions of medical education, hospitals and pharmaceutical businesses, have grown into behemoths that can do considerable harm in the absence of independent and effective regulatory systems. While there are no success stories in the regulation of any kind of industry in India, I will focus...

The government and the MCI dither on a proposed course to provide better primary health care in villages. On February 27, the Delhi High Court slapped contempt notices on the Union Health Secretary and the Chairperson of the Medical Council of India (MCI) for their non-compliance with its order of November 10, 2010, to initiate measures to introduce a “Bachelor of Rural Health Care (BRHC)” course of three and a half...

-Deccan Chronicle For love, they had to give up their lands. Nine years ago, two dalit brothers – Sakthivel and Andvan from Erode, had fallen in love with caste Hindu girls and eloped with them. The two couples are now happily married, but they had to ‘sacrifice’ their 12-acre land in their native village Ottanchathiram, that has been usurped by the caste Hindus. And since they value their lives more than their land,...