What does it take to get the government to fight corruption? One answer could be: a medical facility with an air-conditioned Intensive Care Unit, a team of 60 doctors, a media centre, 1,300 toilets, seven large screens to pipe live action, television sets, and a storage facility of 100,000 litres of water. This is some of the infrastructure behind Baba Ramdev’s fast that starts on 4 June at New Delhi’s Ramlila grounds. Ramdev...

-The Economic Times   Talks between the government and civil society activists on the draft Lokpal Bill almost broke down on Monday, with the civil society members threatening to walk out of the drafting committee. This was following government's insistence on keeping the post of Prime Minister, higher judiciary, Armed Forces, the Election Commission, Public Services Commissions and MPs conduct inside Parliament out of the purview of Lokpal. Members of the civil...

-The Indian Express   Packets of tobacco products will have to carry new harsher pictorial warnings from December 1 as the government today came out with separate sets of gory graphics of cancer-affected lungs and mouth for smoking and smokeless forms of tobacco. The warnings will be rotated every two years instead of the existing duration of one year, apparently in keeping with a demand from the tobacco industry. The Union Ministry of...

-DNA   In an attempt to curb high infant and maternal mortality rate in India, the government has decided to launch scheme from June 1 to provide free healthcare to mothers and children. The Central government has asked the states to ensure free and cashless services to all pregnant women in government hospitals as well as to sick neonates. This includes free drugs, free consumables and diagnostics, free diet during stay and free...

In a secluded hospital bed in this bustling Indian metropolis, a woman who has lain brain dead for 37 years after a brutal sexual assault is at the centre of a national debate on mercy killing. India’s Supreme Court has ruled that Aruna Shanbaug should live, while at the same time supporting passive euthanasia - or the withholding of medical treatments that are keeping her alive. The court’s decision to rule out...