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...

-Live Mint Shailesh Gandhi, a key campaigner for the Right to Information (RTI) Act, became an information commissioner at the Central Information Commission (CIC) in 2008. After a stint of nearly four years, Gandhi will retire on 6 July. In an interview, Gandhi talked about the implementation of the Act and on the government’s attitude to the transparency law. He said RTI had become a “problem child” for the government and it...

Ramesh Singh, an Intelligence Bureau officer and resident of Sonepur under Chhapra, has an MNREGA job card bearing registration number 914. Singh had never applied for it, nor did he know about its issuance Uday Kumar Dwivedi, employed in the Indian Navy, is a resident of Jaitiya village under Jahangirpur panchayat of Sonepur, Chhapra. He was also issued a job card (311). He, too, does not know about it and had...

-The Hindu In the filled slots, SCs constitute just 12% against the stipulated 15% and STs 5% instead of 7.5% Among the ills that plague the Indian higher education system is the continued poor stake of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in it. Year on year, the huge backlog of vacancies in teaching positions in SC/ST categories remains a constant concern with little change in its position. Nearly half the teaching positions...

-The Business Standard The state govt is set to redefine public distribution system by linking it with insurance smart cards Several experiments are taking place across the country to make the public distribution system (PDS) free of leakages. Chhattisgarh that has led these is set to mark a new precedent with its PDS going smart in the next three months. The state government has reached an agreement with the labour ministry to...