Questionable drug trials on mentally challenged persons by doctors in Indore emphasise the need for strict enforcement of medical ethics. IN what appears to be a page out of Robin Cook's medical thriller, government and private doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, reportedly carried out clinical trials of various medicines on some 233 patients who had gone to them seeking psychiatric treatment. As in Cook's famous book Coma, in which a medical...

-The Hindu   District in-charge Minister J. Krishna Palemar has claimed that there is nothing provocative in the speech of RSS leader Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat during Hindu Samajotsava that led to sporadic violence in Uppinangady on Sunday. “What is provocative in his speech? I have seen the video clippings of the programme. I did not find anything provocative. He has made such speeches earlier too,” Mr. Palemar told presspersons here on Thursday. “He...

The Jaipur Literary Festival, a giddily chaotic celebration of the written word set on the grounds of a Rajasthan palace, ended in misery and embarrassment today, with the organizers bowing to pressure from local security forces and scotching plans for Salman Rushdie to “appear” at the festival, finally, by video link. Rushdie had already been forced to cancel plans to come to Jaipur after he had received intelligence reports—bogus intelligence,...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The Reliance/Network18 deal should make us wake up to the impending threat to media plurality. Few are discussing it. India has just seen one of the biggest media deals, where the country’s leading industrial and business giant has bought into the largest network of news and current affairs TV channels. Yet, the fact that this could mark the beginning of a trend leading to private media being controlled...

-The Indian Express   More than a quarter of children between the age group of 10 and 12 years cannot add two small sums of money without using a calculator, a new study has revealed. The research indicated that youngsters are leaving primary school unable to spell, add or do times tables and their parents do not have the time to help them. Around a third cannot do division or basic algebra while half...