-The Hindu To address the rights issue and the skewed sex ratio, girl child-friendly policies get an extra thrust in the 12 Plan document, to be approved formally by this month-end The 12 Plan document of the Planning Commission, to be formally approved this month-end, has recommended setting up of a high level inter-ministerial committee on ‘Care and Protection of the Girl Child’ which will constitute the institutional mechanism for mobilising and...

-Outlook The Women and Child Ministry is planning to make changes in the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986 to include electronic media and internet under its purview. At present the legislation only includes depiction of women in publications, WCD secretary Prem Narain told reporters at an interaction here. "We are also thinking of raising the penalties mentioned in the Act, to make them more contemporary," the WCD secretary said, adding that...

The ICDS' plight is symptomatic of the problems plaguing the Union government's flagship schemes for the poor all over the country.   INDIA may be the only country in the world where we describe the ensuring of the basic socio-economic rights of the people in terms of “flagship schemes” that are seen as the benevolent contribution of governments. One problem with this approach is that the delivery of basic services is...

Each time 25 year old Salma takes her one year old son Zubair to the Batla Clinic (a private clinic in Delhi) for a shot of the DPT, the cost of transportation and the vaccine adds up to approximately Rs.500.   When it is time for Zubair to take the next immunization dose, Salma may find that the expenses have entirely spiraled out of her reach. New vaccines and expensive brands of baby...

Greedy lawyers and lack of awareness condemn women undertrials twice over Kanimozhis All?     Total number of male and female convicts in India: 1,23,941; Number of undertrials: 2,50,204     Number of female prisoners: 15,406; Female undertrials: 10,687     Female prisoners compromise 4.1 per cent of the prison population     469 women convicts with their 556 children and 1,196 undertrials with their 1,314 children are in prisons across the country     Official capacity of prisons in...