-PTI The Haryana Government has formulated a rural water policy for the state for the year 2012 in order to save precious drinking water by preventing wastage due to unmetered connections and open taps. A spokesman of the Public Health Engineering Department said that this policy has been formulated keeping in view the present scenario of wastage of water through unmetered connections provided to consumers in rural areas, which are being billed...

-BBC Dalits are at the bottom of the Hindu caste system and despite laws to protect them, they still face widespread discrimination in India, writes Natalia Antelava. As the glass flew across the room and straight into the wall, a dozen or so men stopped drinking their tea. Dr Vinod Sonkar threw money on the counter - enough for the tea he drank and the glass he had smashed - and walked out. Dr...

-The Economic Times Heaps of dusty files continue to grow in government buildings and sensitive papers are mysteriously lost, leaked or dramatically reduced to ashes in fires while the six-year-old plan to modernise and digitise governance remains tied up in what it should eliminate - red tape. The latest casualty was the Union home ministry, where a fire was reported on Sunday, days after a blaze engulfed Mumbai's Mantralaya, killing people and...

-IANS Mathura's child welfare system is marred by poor sanitation and living standards, dilapidated buildings, ineffective staff and irregular adoptions, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) says. The situation came to light Friday when a five-member NCPCR team inspected a juvenile observation home, an orphanage and a beggar's home - all run by the Uttar Pradesh government - in the Hindu holy town. At the State Observation Home, which had...

-Live Mint Latest houselisting data demonstrates a visible growth in the material well-being of the two groups Indians, all of them, across class and caste, traded up over the past decade, a period of rapid and record economic growth—that’s the counter-intuitive message in the latest update to Census 2011. According to the so-called houselisting data released by the census, scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) have, like the rest of the country,...