Less than two in 10 women in India received medical attention by a qualified professional in 2010 while delivering at home. Contrary to popular belief, fewer women in urban India received medical attention while delivering at home than rural India - 10.8% against 16.2%. Nearly 1 in 4 births overall were attended by "untrained functionaries" - varying from as high as 53.5% in Jharkhand to as low as 0.2% in...

The media's failure to recruit Dalits is a betrayal of the constitutional guarantees of equality and fraternity. There were almost none in 1992, and there are almost none today: Dalits in the newsrooms of India's media organisations. Stories from the lives of close to 25 per cent of Indians (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) are unlikely to be known — much less broadcast or written about. Unless, of course, the stories are...

An ongoing hearing before a constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, looking into media coverage of sub-judice cases, has had its scope expanded to include coverage of criminal investigations and television shows containing sex and violence. The court intends to examine questions related to criminal investigations, including raids, questioning and arrests by police officials. If the court does rule adversely, then crime reporting may no longer be the same and late-night...

Students graduating in law may have to do a stint of compulsory practical training in courts, like the internship that medical graduates have to undergo. Law teachers this newspaper spoke to agreed that such a period of apprenticeship would help new law graduates but argued that it should be kept optional. The original proposal to make legal internship a compulsory part of the five-year LLB course had come from the Chief Justice...

-The Times of India   Health services in the state are likely to get a new fillip with 388 regular doctors being appointed and posted in rural parts of the state. Appointment letters were handed over to the doctors by chief minister Arjun Munda at a function organized by state health department and Jharkhand Rural Health Mission (JRHMS) at the Reproductive and Child Health Centre, Namkum on Thursday. Handing over the appointment letters...