-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to examine a doctor's claim that India's "unscientific" tuberculosis protocol stipulates an inadequate medicine regime to cut costs, thus promoting relapses and generating lethal drug-resistant strains. The court did not issue a formal notice to the government but asked additional solicitor-general Maninder Singh to talk to the petitioner, Raman Kakar, and get back to the court. Kakar has argued that the current...

-The Indian Express Women continue to constitute 98 per cent of the sterilised population; this despite the fact that the procedure is less complicated for men. New Delhi: Even as the Health Ministry announced plans on Friday for a targeted population control programme in 145 high fertility districts, data from 2013 shows that nothing has changed since the deaths of 19 women in a sterilisation camp in Bilaspur in 2014. Women continue to...

-The Hindu The sense of impunity that drives discrimination against Dalits is at the heart of recent demands for the dilution, or even repeal, of the Act for prevention of atrocities against SCs and STs It is the sense of impunity nurtured by caste hierarchy that prepares the social ground for the “shockingly cruel and inhumane” crimes against Dalits called atrocities. It is this impunity that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled...

-The Hindu Conservationists blame increased human activity along habitat. Kolkata: Scientists and wildlife conservationists are seeing red over the threat posed to Gangetic river dolphins by the National Waterways project. The animal is protected under Schedule I of the Indian Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 and is a declared endangered species. The development of the Ganga for shipping is seen by wildlife conservationists as the single-largest threat to the survival of the species, whose...

-The Hindu Business Line Although literacy levels are improving, there’s not enough learning happening. This calls for urgent attention This year, marks the 50th year of International Literacy Day. In 1966, UNESCO declared September 8 as International Literacy Day to “mobilize the international community and to promote literacy as an instrument to empower individuals, communities and societies”. At Independence in 1947, India had a literacy rate of 12 per cent, which stands today...