-IPS News BETUL, India- Mamta Bai, 36, distinctly remembers the FIRst time the police came to her village: it was December 2014 and her neighbour, Purva Bai, had just been beaten unconscious by her alcoholic husband, prompting Mamta to make a distress call to the nearest station. Once in the neighborhood, policemen pulled the abusive husband out of his home and asked the village women if they wanted him to be arrested. “Yes,”...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Same-sex rapes by fellow prisoners trigger most jail suicides, the National Human Rights Commission has said in a report, swivelling the spotlight to the administration of prisons and the plight of inmates. While such abuses were hardly a secret to many, this is the FIRst such official acknowledgement by a rights panel or government organisation. The study was prompted by the suicide of a suspect in the Delhi...

-Outlook New Delhi: A significant ozone build up has been witnessed this summer in several areas of the national capital, including the one where Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal resides, increasing the public health risk, a green body warned today. A latest analysis done by Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on the eve of World Environment Day on June 5 found that the area where Kejriwal resides was "highly vulnerable" to...

-The Indian Express It can be strengthened —by the collection of taxes at the local level, for instance. Democratic decentralisation, conceived two decades ago, seems to be a lost cause at FIRst sight. Beyond lip service by politicians, neither panchayats nor municipalities have captured the public imagination as viable, responsive, accountable institutions of government. Just after the Karnataka panchayat elections, which ended on June 2, the continued disempowerment of local governments is...

-The Indian Express A tussle is on between El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole. Government cannot afford to be a bystander. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted that India will get deficient rains in 2015, likely to be 88 per cent of the long period average (LPA) of 89 cm, which is the average seasonal rain (June-September) received by the country in the 50 years between 1951 and 2000....