-Business Standard Bitter gourd leads decline as green veggies nosedive up to 50% on Maharashtra's move to delist them from spot mandis Mumbai: Vegetables price have plunged in Mumbai over the past two weeks, on a sudden increase in direct supply from farmers to retailers and bulk consumers, following the state government’s removal of the legal compulsion for farmers to sell only at regulated wholesale markets (mandis). Prices of green vegetables have...

-NDTV Kolkata: As if the death of 19 tribal children in Odisha due to malnutrition was not bad enough, a minister in Naveen Patnaik’s government has now blamed the disaster on the large size of tribal families. “Each tribal family has 8-9 children. There’s no family planning and therefore the malnutrition deaths,” Minister of Women and Child Welfare Usha Devi said. “They also won’t come down from their village in the hill,” she...

-The Hindu Widespread chewing, legendary paan shops and a ‘so-what’ attitude trump disease concerns. Chennai: Union Health Minister J. P. Nadda promised concerned members in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that he would advise all States to ban spitting in public. He was reassuring several MPs led by K.T.S Tulsi, who expressed worry that “the great Indian spit” was causing many communicable diseases. Yet, most municipal laws already prohibit spitting and prescribe penalties....

-Hindustan Times Soon, colleges across Bengal will have separate toilets for transgender students. Kolkata: As a step towards addressing the concerns of the transgender community and helping them earn social acceptance, the coordination committee for West Bengal Transgender Development Board, formed by the Mamata government, had recommended setting up separate toilets or modifying existing ones for these students at all the state-run and the state-aided colleges. Following the recommendation, the state higher...

-IndiaSpend.com Data demonstrate that discrimination against the SCs and STs in education, employment and property ownership continues despite affirmative action policies. Earlier this week, when upper-caste villagers in the western UP district of Firozabad tried to prevent the funeral of a Dalit paramilitary soldier killed in a terrorist ambush, it was the latest manifestation of widespread discrimination against the 305 million Indians belonging to scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Upper-caste villagers refused to...