There has been a six-fold increase in the number of antibiotics being popped by Indians. This includes the retail sale of Carbapenems -- powerful class IV antibiotics, typically used as a "last resort" to treat serious infections caused by multi-drug resistant, gram-negative pathogens. Research by the Centre for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy, Washington DC, has found that retail sale of carbapenems increased six times -- from 0.21 units per million...

On February 9, 2010, the then Minister of Environment and Forests, Government of India, Jairam Ramesh, imposed an indefinite moratorium on the introduction of Bt Brinjal in India. It is necessary and desirable to quote the order verbatim. It reads as follows: It is my duty to adopt a cautious, precautionary based approach and impose a moratorium on the release of Bt Brinjals till such time independent scientific studies establish, to...

While India faces an acute shortage of trained medical manpower, as many as 1,333 doctors migrated to foreign shores over the last one year. During the same period, the previous year - from April 1, 2010 to March 31, 2011 - 1,157 doctors had migrated in search of employment, and between 2009 and 2010, 1,458 doctors went abroad. This latest revelation by Union Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad on Friday comes just...

There is a complicated relationship between abortion as such and the selective abortion of female foetuses. This dilemma is one with which the women’s movement in India has been grappling since the late 1980s. In my discussion of this dilemma, I would like to move away completely from Satyamev Jayate, the television programme, (on which a discussion has been initiated by Shohini Ghosh on kafila.org). In any case, there the...

-The Economist HOW should one judge the lot of women in India, a country that is in many ways progressive, modern, tolerant and yet by turns repressive and hostile? Women hold the highest political positions (the presidency, speaker of parliament, leader of the ruling party, leader of the opposition in parliament, several chief ministers of large states) and in theory they are protected by a variety laws promoting equality. Though development indicators...