-Outlook Labour is bought cheap, treated cheap-in India's garment factories as at Bangladeshi ones Even as the world remains morbidly fixated on the tragedy in Rana Plaza on the outskirts of Dhaka-the collapse of the textiles sweatshop three weeks ago buried 1,127 workers and sparked off a global outrage-it is business as usual at India's textile hubs. And you don't have to travel far from the city centre to...

-The Hindu Khunti (Jharkhand): On the night of April 30, worshippers in the Raja Rani temple in Naurhi village in Adki block near Ranchi were singing, chanting and celebrating the new temple in their village when a group of CPI (Maoists) entered the temple and shot Dilip Acharya, the oldest of the three brothers who built the temple, dead as he lay asleep on the floor. The men then addressed...

-Live Mint Some commentators dismiss the seriousness of India's nutritional crisis as it fails to account for genetic differences With one in two children malnourished in India, child malnutrition is considered to be among the biggest challenges facing the country. But are these figures highly exaggerated? The answer is a resounding yes, according to Columbia University economist Arvind Panagariya, who believes that the international standards used to measure nutritional attainments of...

-The Hindu The south leads in the number of medical and nursing seats, with for-profit private colleges dominating the scene. It will take major capacity expansion in the government sector to meet WHO norms on access to health professionals. India has achieved major organisational and technological successes but the health system's performance is abysmal. This cannot be attributed to poverty. It is poor health that places India 134th in the Human Development...

-The Indian Express A sound whistleblowers' protection law is long awaited. It languishes in Parliament at the system's peril Nandi Singh, a resident of a remote village in Assam, was brutally attacked with axes in September 2012 as a result of a complaint filed by him regarding irregularities in the functioning of fair price shops supplying rations under the public distribution system. He succumbed to his injuries on the way to the...