-Live Mint Incidents at Bhopal and Indore highlight irregularities and ethical violations in some trials In 2004, doctors at the Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC), established exclusively for treating the victims of the 1984 gas leak, recruited unsuspecting survivors for clinical trials without their knowledge or consent; 14 participants died during the course of the trials. Together with the episode in Indore’s Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital (that Mint reported on 10...

-The Telegraph The Centre has issued a directive asking officials to seek only the minimum number of documents required for claiming family pension following complaints of unnecessary harassment. In a memorandum issued last week, the department of pension and pensioners’ welfare asked all central government ministries and departments to “strictly” adhere to instructions so that relatives of deceased pensioners are not put through “any hardships”. From the “representations received in this department it...

-The Hindu A 2012 WHO study ranks India third — behind Myanmar and Bangladesh — among countries that fail to provide health cover to people. A 2011 study reported in The Lancet on ‘Healthcare and equity’ confirms this: every year, at least 39 million people here fall into poverty due to private out-of-pocket health expenditure. A vast majority of Indians do not have access to healthcare or essential drugs. By the...

-The Hindustan Times   To get a driver's licence, what you have to counter is nothing short of a licence raj. Your mammoth effort will not be enough to get you the licence to drive on Delhi's roads. However, like in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, help is always given to those who ask for it. At transport department offices, this help comes in the form of touts.  Though the Delhi government had...

I have not read the Private Member's Bill on media regulation that Meenakshi Natarajan was scheduled to move in Parliament last week so I am not in a position to comment upon it, but I am certainly of the opinion that the media (both print and electronic) needs to be regulated. Since my ideas on this issue have generated some controversy they need to be clarified. I want regulation of the...