-Down to Earth   Buy an Indian breed from Australia In June last year, we visited Malaysia on the invitation of the country’s oldest and most active consumer action group, The Consumer Association of Penang, to study the livestock production systems and to advise on how these can be transformed into more sustainable and less industrial farming systems. The past 40 years of aggressive industrial growth in Malaysia has seen small-scale peasant agriculture and...

-PTI The Madras High Court has observed that the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education ( RTE) Act does not make it clear as to what constitutes a neighbourhood school.  "If there is more than one school in a neighbourhood, to which institution the parent can have the choice, which authority can direct admission to such school and who will supervise the admission is not clear," justice K Chandru said.  The...

The goal of universal health care requires an overhaul of the public health system, medical education and regulatory mechanisms. At long last, public health is on the agenda of the country’s policy makers. The Prime Minister’s Republic Day speech mentioned that the Twelfth Plan would focus on health just as the Eleventh Plan had focussed on education. But the manner in which the education sector has been messed with does not...

Regulations covering public health should override personal rights and the country cannot wait any more for a good public health law. The health care industry, including institutions of medical education, hospitals and pharmaceutical businesses, have grown into behemoths that can do considerable harm in the absence of independent and effective regulatory systems. While there are no success stories in the regulation of any kind of industry in India, I will focus...

Two ways to advertise your modernity in India today: first is to carry an iPad, second is to declare that you are firmly on the side of 'reforms' There are two quick ways to advertise your modernity in India today. The first is to carry an iPad when you go for meetings, even if all you do with it is read email; and the second is to declare that you are...