-IPS News BELLARY, India: HuligeAmma, a Dalit woman in her mid-forties, bends over a sewing machine, carefully running the needle over the hem of a shirt. Sitting nearby is Roopa, her 22-year-old daughter, who reads an amusing message on her cell phone and laughs heartily. The pair leads a simple yet contented life – they subsist on half a dollar a day, stitch their own clothes and participate in schemes to educate...

-Hindustan Times Hamirpur/ Jalaun/ Banda: The dangerous sand mafia stops at nothing. It kills, runs over men in uniform, kidnaps and, in Uttar Pradesh, even molests and rapes. Its impunity stems from the fact, as an HT investigation found, that complaints lodged with police often remain confined to files. Shivpal Singh, gram pradhan of Bansariya village, testifies to the mafia’s dominance. “In March 2014, the musclemen of a kingpin sexually assaulted two women...

-Business Standard When there is an enormous shortage of public hospitals, when state expenditure on health care is abysmally low by any international yardstick, tax money should be used to set up public hospitals Most relatively well-off Indians have got used to the idea of taking out medical insurance policies in order to take care of possible health episodes. It has been a rapidly growing business, doubling in four or five years....

-The New Indian Express If the Government of India writes off the Handloom Reservation Act, more than one lakh weavers in Telangana and AP will be affected, fears All India Federation of Handloom Organisations   The handloom sector which is one of the biggest is always caught in the vicious cycle of low demand, massive unemployment, dwindling incomes and starvation deaths. This time, the problem has been compounded by the Government of India...

-The Indian Express During the election campaign, the BJP had promised a 50 per cent profit margin on minimum support prices to farmers. But over the past year, the optimism of farmers has turned to despair. Since the parliamentary elections, basmati paddy prices have fallen by 35 per cent and cotton by 25 per cent. The era of cooperative federalism notwithstanding, the Centre practically decreed that states not announce a crop...