-The Hindu The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) cannot hold the prospects of the country's hearing impaired ransom to the whims of a single individual head of institution. In a patently regressive move, the premier university has recently decided to shut down the Indian Sign Language Research and Training Centre (ISLRTC) from the current academic year. This, despite the growing emphasis on signing as a language to bridge the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment has got a reluctant railways on board for its ambitious bill seeking a blanket ban on manual scavenging. The Prohibition of Empowerment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012, which was cleared last week by the cabinet, had been pending for over a year because the railways did not want to be part of it. The largest public carrier had...

-The Times of India CHANDIGARH: Shedding their image of being indifferent to the idea of women Empowerment, a cluster of 20 villages under the Thuakhap of Jind district has banned sex selection and female feticide and announced a fine of Rs 11,000 on violators. The violators would be socially boycotted in case the offence is repeated. According to the khap spokesperson, Jitender Singh Chhattar, the community leaders, in a meeting held on Sunday...

-The Hindu     Ignou's dual talk leaves students in the lurch Nobody would have thought that in less than two years of setting up of the first Indian Sign Language Research & Training Centre (ISLRTC) for the hearing-impaired, plans would be afoot to shut it down. But that is what seems to be happening at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) campus here. Vice-Chancellor M. Aslam categorically told The Hindu that there was...

-The Hindustan Times The recent release of The Lancet's special edition on Maternal and Child Nutrition in Delhi provided an occasion to debate the relevance of its recommendations for India. The discourse was enlivened by a statement, released ahead of the event by several Indian health experts, challenging the content and intent of some of the suggested interventions. Three authors of The Lancet series and many of the critics who issued that statement...