-The Hindu Business Line The IMD should be conferred autonomous status so that it functions along professional lines, without worrying about political correctness. Given how awry its forecasts in the last couple of years had gone, one can be forgiven for being cynical about the India Meteorological Department's (IMD) prognosis of a ‘normal' South-West monsoon this time. The country's official weather agency has predicted nationwide rainfall during the four-month monsoon season...

-The Hindu Business Line   Arsenic and fluoride contaminated water has condemned millions to live wasted lives in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Business Line visited several villages in the affected regions for this special report by A. Srinivas. Sixty-nine-year-old Renubala Ari of Deganga village in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district is counting her last days. But it is not her death that worries her. Blind in both eyes and with painful...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Supreme Court judgment on the Novartis-Glivec case is remarkable because it has gone beyond the specific technical and legal issues surrounding patents and has put the matter in a much larger political and economic perspective. The deeper implication of the judgment is that it is not only justified to deny patents when incremental innovation is trivial as in the Glivec case. The judgment has linked the...

-The Hindu Business Line     Technology has improved the poor's access to healthcare. India grapples with the issue of a major divide between the well-to-do and the lower end of the population strata. The challenge of uplifting the ‘below the poverty line' section of the population remains a challenging task. One of the areas which ranks high on this priority list is access to healthcare facilities. As is well known, events related to emergency...

-Down to Earth Inadequate sewage treatment and disposal in the national capital territory is contaminating city's groundwater Delhi residents who depend on groundwater for their drinking water needs be warned. The latest data of the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB) shows that groundwater samples taken from observation wells in the national capital are getting contaminated because of their unhygienic catchments and untreated sewage, which is discharged in the open and into drains,...