Within weeks of getting bail from the Supreme Court in connection with charges of sedition, human rights activist Binayak Sen has been made member of the Planning Commission's Steering Committee on Health, which will advise the panel on the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-2017). Binayak Sen, who was released on bail from the Raipur jail last month, will, based on his experience of having worked as a paediatrician in Chhattisgarh's tribal belt,...

The outcome of Stockholm Convention to ban endosulfan capping a long-drawn campaign against the pesticide on health grounds may have brought cheers to the opponents but the domestic industry is crying foul suspecting an European link aiming to capture the Indian market. India and a few other developing countries extracted several exemptions, including a phase out period of 11 years to ban production and use of the toxic pesticide at the...

PREGNANT WOMEN in Kasargod district are fighting the endosulfan tragedy in their own way — by opting for abortion. A sacrifice conducted in silence, even a 10-year campaign against the chemical has not yet convinced the government to ban its use. Without the intervention of the welfare state, they are now released from the fear of death and chronic disease. They have seen enough. They have lost many in a short...

As the stage is set for the crucial meeting of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP), a global regime to protect human health and the environment from dangerous chemicals, to be held in Geneva from April 25, a showdown between the Centre and Kerala has been underway. In the meeting with an all-party delegation from Kerala, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has reiterated the position taken by Union ministers...

Sharad Pawar says many states had asked him not to ban the pesticide Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is rooting for endosulfan just before the fifth Conference of Parties (COP) of the Stockholm Convention meets in Geneva from April 25 to April 30 to decide the fate of the pesticide. There seems to be a pattern in Pawar’s resistance to banning endosulfan. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha on February...