-Deccan Herald Make new entrants provide 40 per cent risk coverage to the farming sector on a household basis. Unseasonal rains and strong winds that lashed the entire north-western region have done immense damage to the standing crops. The Union Ministry of Agriculture has estimated damage to standing crops in 50 lakh hectares in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra. Coming after an extended...

-The Times of India KOLKATA: In yet another legal blow to the Mamata Banerjee government, Calcutta high court on Tuesday upheld the compensation recommended by West Bengal Human Rights Commission (WBHRC) to Jadavpur UniverSITy professor Ambikesh Mahapatra, who was arrested in 2012 for forwarding an email joke on the chief minister. Justice Dipankar Datta also ordered a probe into the role of two police officers involved in the arrest of Mahapatra and...

-Frontline Kerala is facing a SITuation where health care costs are leading more and more people, not just low-income families, to financial distress. KERALA is once again drawing attention to itself, this time for a persistent trend of a large number of households being pushed into financial ruin because of the expenses incurred for medical care. Several studies have now found evidence for the many facets of this worrying development in a...

-The Hindu While the rates of sexual violence in India - both reported in official statistics and unreported on the basis of household surveys - are towards the lower end of the global spectrum, data on women's autonomy in India indicate that there is a hidden emergency Having opened up a fresh conversation about the SITuation of women since the December 16, 2012 gang rape, has India done enough to address the...

-The Indian Express Universal health coverage (UHC) is at the heart of the government's healthcare agenda. The 12th Five Year Plan targets a long-term goal of UHC where "each individual would have assured access to a defined essential range of medicines and treatment at an affordable price, which would be entirely free for a large percentage of the population". But this year's reduced budgetary allocation raises troublesome questions about its ability...