-The Hindu They are protesting salary deduction   Malaria and TB treatment is seriously affected in Manipur following a strike by contractual employees. The worst hit are the Directly Observed Treatment Short Course, the Revised National Tuberculosis Control Programme (RNTCP) and sputum microscopy programmes. T. Lenindro, general secretary of the All Manipur RNTCP Contractual Workers’ Welfare Union, toldThe Hindu that though the contractual appointment of 116 employees of the RNTCP from March 2012 to...

-The Indian Express New NSS data affirms that GDP growth remains the best way to tackle poverty Amid the pervasive economic gloom, provisional data from the 68th round of the National Sample Survey Office’s just-concluded household consumer expenditure survey offers a sliver of good news. According to it, average inflation-adjusted expenditure for July 2011-June 2012 rose by about 4.5 per cent in two years, with the poorest 10 per cent of the...

-Live Mint State’s role to diminish from that of provider to manager, making way for private companies, individual practitioners The government is set to relinquish its role as a provider of primary healthcare, making way for private companies and individual medical practitioners to take the lead in offering clinical Services, and focus on preventive interventions such as immunization and HIV testing. The move is in line with the government’s approach of outsourcing its...

-The Business Standard Hiring contract labour must come with more commitments Almost a third of India’s organised labour force is on contract. This is an inevitable consequence of archaic labour laws that make it impossible for India Inc to disengage permanent workers even if they can’t afford them, don’t need them or they don’t perform. Companies such as Maruti Suzuki India have thus used contract workers liberally — almost half the workers...

-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today asked the Bengal government to take steps to arrest the migration of widows to Vrindavan. “This is human problem… a very serious problem,” Justices D.K. Jain and Madan B. Lokur told state counsel Abhijit Sengupta. “Many of the destitute are coming from your state or Odisha,” the court said. Sengupta sought time to file his reply to the suggestion. The court also directed the Uttar Pradesh government to...