Health is a state of mental, social and physical well-being and not merely an absence of disease or infirmity. To achieve this noble objective, India requires health care professionals who are trained in institutions with standardised infrastructure, and the availability of accessible and equitable health care for both the rural and urban populace. Recently, the health sector has been in the news — from the creation of a rural based...

A life bound to a wheelchair, with speech inability and two heart attacks, would not seem like much of a life. But doctor Sharadkumar Dicksheet proved it wrong. In over four decades, Dicksheet performed over 2.5 lakh facial reconstructive surgeries for free. Until this winter, that is. He died on November 14 in Brooklyn, US. He was 81. Dicksheet has two daughters and a son from two marriages, neither of which lasted. What...

-The Times of India   It was the sheer need for a livelihood that Ram Lal joined his elder brother Hakla in working at an asbestos mine at Netaji Ki Bara in Udaipur as a 12-year-old kid. Now at 34 years, Ram Lal suffers from acute respiratory problems and has been loosing weight constantly not to mention that his body is a skeleton, literally. His elder brother Hakla died in March this...

The contrast could not have been starker. On one side is an English teacher leading fishermen and villagers, using his unbridled oratory to spew propaganda against Kudankulam’s ready-to-start nuclear plant that will produce 1,000MW. Arraigned against him is a group of engineers who have devoted their lives to building nuclear power plants. Affable, soft-spoken and hurt that the world’s “safest” nuclear plant that they have built has not been allowed to...

Consider this. Every time petrol prices rise, oil companies end up losing more money. How? The price differential between petrol and diesel increases further; people start buying diesel-powered vehicles so oil firms bleed more. Even worse, we all bleed because dieselisation adds to toxic pollution in our cities. This, in turn, adds to the health burden and costs. This is all very well accepted. Yet, nobody has done anything to fix...