-The Hindu Victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy have welcomed the Supreme Court’s directive to the Union and Madhya Pradesh governments on providing access to better healthcare to them. “The court’s directive to provide health booklets and smart cards to victims is something that most of us here need,” said Hamida Bi. According to Hamida, neither the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC) nor the State government’s Gas Relief hospital maintained a...

-The Times of India With the UPA government's efforts to build a consensus on allowing foreign retailers in the multi-brand retail sector going nowhere, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday urged the UPA allies to help evolve a consensus on the reforms measure. Participating in the first meeting of the newly set-up UPA co-ordination committee, PM said that it was necessary to build support for the move to let in foreign retailers. The...

-The Hindustan Times With an eye on improving rural mobile telephony, the Planning Commission is mulling the option of providing free mobile phones to 6.52 lakh families living below poverty line. “We are exploring that possibility. We are working on an idea. The basic idea is that in the rural areas, we need to incentivize access to mobile telephony,” Plan panel deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia said on Wednesday. A scheme to provide free...

-The Hindustan Times Corruption over spectrum, land, arms or sports is passé. The latest space to extract money from is the female reproductive system. After Chhattisgarh, Bihar has become the newest state where doctors and nursing homes have allegedly made crores from the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana through illegal hysterectomy — an operation to remove the uterus. Numerous cases of forced surgeries came to light in Samastipur district following a probe by...

-The Economic Times Chhattisgarh is set to become the first state to extend health insurance cover to all its unorganised sector workers, a step that will not only make healthcare accessible to all but also set a model for other states to follow. The state has offered to pay the insurance premium from October 1 for all those not covered under the Centre's flagship health insurance scheme-the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna (RSBY)....