-The Telegraph The Supreme Court today issued notices to all states and Union territories asking them to explain unsafe and unhygienic sterilisation drives in violation of an earlier order for safe procedures. The move came on a PIL by a health rights activist who alleged inhuman sterilisations continued in rural areas in “reckless disregard” of the lives of poor women, especially in Bihar. In one case, 53 women were sterilised in two hours...

By selectively borrowing habits from the West, the urban Indian has worsened his chances with cancer. Doctors say that while the city-bred Indian has willingly adopted a western diet, lapping up high-fat foods and shunning high-fibre content, he or she hasn't picked up the healthy western attitude of detecting and treating cancer early.  The end-result, as the India's Million Death Study (MDS) reported on Thursday shows, is that urban Indians are...

MGNREGA is certainly a good idea. But it can’t be allowed to play havoc with farming operations by weaning away labourers during peak season RURAL DEVELOPMENT Minister Jairam Ramesh recently rubbished the need for freezing the flagship rural job scheme MGNREGA during peak agricultural season. Dismissing the possibility, Ramesh had said: “The matter has been examined by the Mihir Shah Committee and rejected.” Knowing that Mihir Shah’s entry into Planning Commission...

-IANS   States should be allowed to declare an off period for the rural jobs scheme MGNREGA during peak agricultural season, says Sumitra Mahajan, chief of a parliamentary panel on rural development. She also believes extending the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) to urban areas - as suggested by the Economic Survey last week - is not practicable unless the scheme is made to include semi-skilled work apart from manual...

The Centre on Friday informed the Supreme Court that appropriate steps would soon be taken to amend the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 to eliminate manual scavenging. Additional Solicitor General Harin Raval told a Bench of Justices H.L. Dattu and C.K. Prasad that necessary amendments would be introduced in the monsoon session of Parliament. The ASG also assured the court that the government would...