-The Hindu Lax monitoring, poor public engagement and inadequate training to vaccinators have dealt a serious blow to the crucial pentavalent immunisation programme The Pentavalent vaccine, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's latest addition to the immunisation programme, has run into a storm. The Supreme Court has sent a notice to the Ministry asking why the vaccine should not be banned in the country. The vaccine is no stranger to controversy. A...

-The Hindustan Times The UPA's showpiece direct benefits transfer (DBT) plan is struggling. Poor Aadhaar enrolment clubbed with lack of banking facilities is coming in the way of the anti-poverty programme. Numbers are telling. Two months after the roll out in Rae Bareli, the constituency of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, only Rs. 1,400 has been transferred in Rae Bareli. The district has 6,000 people enlisted for the National Social Security Programme....

-The Hindu Jagdish Bhagwati's attacks on Amartya Sen are based on a series of misattributions and obscure the real issues on which the two economists differ Rich and lively public debates are the raison d'être of any democracy. But the recent attacks by Professor Jagdish Bhagwati on Dr. Amartya Sen confound the real issues on which Sen and Bhagwati differ. Bhagwati tries to position himself as a proponent of growth that would benefit...

-The Hindu Health activists demand public disclosure of maternal death reviews and the remedial action taken Twenty-two-year-old Kousalya (name changed), a Scheduled Caste woman in a remote village in Karnataka, was in an abusive marriage. She had suffered a late miscarriage in her first pregnancy and had been very careful with seeking antenatal care early in this pregnancy. She had moderate anaemia which was not identified or treated at the taluka hospital....

-The Hindu Eminent sociologist Virginius Xaxa will be chairman of committee If UPA-I constituted the Sachar Committee to map the condition of Muslims in the country, on Saturday, UPA-II set up a high level committee on Saturday to prepare a position paper on the current socio-economic, health and educational status of tribals that will also "suggest policy initiatives as well as effective outcome-oriented measures to improve development indicators and strengthen public service...