Social activist Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption has brought the Jan Lokpal Bill back in focus 43 years after it was first introduced in Parliament The prospects of bumper wheat procurement from Punjab and Haryana may get affected with rain along with hailstorm threatening to hit wheat production in both the states. With over 90% of wheat crop yet to be harvested in both states, experts have asked farmers to wait for...

The world will be watching India as the conference of parties to the Stockholm Convention meet in Geneva from April 25 to 29 to discuss, among other things, a global ban on the pesticide endosulfan. India was the only member country to take a stand against the ban at the Sixth Meeting of the Persistent Organic Pollutants Review Committee to the Convention that recommended the ban last year. Domestic opposition to India's...

Stillbirths are largely invisible as a social and public health problem. Millions of families experience stillbirth, yet these deaths remain unenumerated, unsupported, and the solutions undercooked. Calling upon the international community and individual countries for action, British medical journal The Lancet has said better counting of stillbirths alongside maternal and neonatal deaths and strategic programmatic action would bring stillbirths under account. The Lancet's series on stillbirths suggests that millions of such cases...

Leprosy has officially been eliminated in India, yet 130,000 new cases are diagnosed every year. Richard Cookson and Seyi Rhodes report on the plight of the patients shunned by society Narsappa was just 10 years old when he was told he had leprosy, but the news changed the course of his life forever. People in his Indian village immediately began to shun him and told his parents that he had to...

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has cornered the state government, which had recently demanded a special package of Rs 2,500 crore for frost-hit farmers, in its report tabled in state Assembly today. The CAG has found gross irregularities, non-implementation of schemes, weak budgetary and expenditure controls in both original and supplementary budgets, rush of expenditure at the close of the financial year and underutilisation of central assistance. “The targets...