-The Times of India MUMBAI: When World AIDS Day is observed across the globe on December 1, India will enter the third, and perhaps the most perplexing decade of its HIVAIDS epidemic. The first 29 years were marked with victory as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) metamorphosed from being the deadliest word in public health to just another chronic disease such as diabetes or hypertension. that can be managed well with medicines....

-Economic and Political Weekly The importance of hand-washing in personal and public hygiene has evolved over the centuries. While the market with its countless number of soaps and hand-wash products for personal hygiene with the accompanying advertising has created a false sense of security, it is community hygiene implemented through public health measures that is really effective in the battle against disease. Lekha D Bhat (lekhabhatd@gmail.com) teaches at the Department of Social...

-Outlook The Supreme Court has slapped a fine of Rs 25,000 on the Centre for failing to file on time an affidavit on women being forced to become 'devadasis' and the possibility of abolition of the age-old tradition. A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and U U Lalit said that since the government has not filed its response despite the last opportunity given by the court on September 11, it needed...

-The Hindu What happened at Shishubhawan is symptomatic of how deep the rot is in India's crumbling public health infrastructure. It has been two months since news and reports of the deaths of 40 infants at Shishubhawan, the largest paediatric care centre in eastern India, broke. The facility is for critically-ill children from Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. By the end of September, 56 deaths were reported in a span on 12 days. Even...

-Hindustan Times School textbooks in recent decades have frequently become battlegrounds for ideological contestation in India. Most textbook wars are to advance majoritarian perspectives on history and culture. However, a recent very different textbook skirmish broke out about the public and private sectors in healthcare. The story of this ideological clash is bemusing and instructive, illuminating competing perspectives on the nature of education, healthcare and markets in new India. This clash surfaced...