HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...

-The Wall Street Journal These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children. What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths. India is a nation that prides itself on having been self-sufficient in...

The change is accompanied by a significant geographical shift from the south and north-east to states in other parts of India such as Maharashtra, Bihar, Orissa and Rajasthan Marking a dramatic shift in the demographic profile of people with AIDS, migrant workers and their wives have emerged as a high-risk group (HRG) for contracting the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), with an infection rate surpassing that of injecting drug users, commercial sex...

India's decision this month to produce Germany-based multinational Bayer's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, in the first use of "compulsory licensing" in South Asia, will save lives but also raises intricate questions. Under the compulsory licensing process, a government can under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules bypass a patent owner's rights after three years and order the manufacture and sale of life-saving medicines at much cheaper cost than by obtaining the medicine from...

An international conference on agriculture beginning here on Tuesday will debate the multiple challenges faced by women in farms across developing economies, including finding gender-sensitive solutions to reduce drudgery involved in farm work with better technology innovation. From sowing to selling farm products, women’s role in agriculture has been globally recognized, A. Ayyappan, director general of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), told reporters on Monday. The three-day conference will address...