The 23-year-old criminal trial of the Bhopal gas tragedy will see the verdict delivered on Monday, but survivors fear the “glaring omissions” by prosecuting agency CBI may deny them justice. Several Indian officials of Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) will be in court on June 7 as the accused in one of the country’s longest criminal cases. But missing will be all the foreign accused, including the then chairman of the...

With often preventable, non-communicable diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory illness accounting for 60 per cent of all global deaths, experts from around the world gathered at a United Nations forum today to draw up plans to reverse the trend. Solutions exist to prevent premature deaths from such diseases by cutting tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol, yet the...

Despite a booming economy, nutrition deprivation among India’s children remains widespread.  “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” So begins the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established 60 years ago and celebrated today around the globe. This year’s theme is non-discrimination. When it comes to nutrition, all of India’s children are not equal. According to India’s third National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) of 2005-06, 20...

Hundreds of thousands of sick people in India are suffering unnecessary and excruciating pain because of a lack of funds, according to a new report. The Human Rights Watch group says that budgetary constraints result in poor medical training, restrictive drug regulations and poor patient care. The group says that many major cancer hospitals do not provide patients with the painkilling drug, morphine. This is even though it has a reputation...

THE LAUNCH of free market liberalisation in 1991 triggered widespread prosperity for the Indian middle classes, making them the showpiece of India’s muchfêted economic boom. But little has ever changed for the bulk of the country’s poor, hundreds of millions of who continue to barely scrape through from day to day, doomed to extreme poverty and, consequently, malnutrition, disease and death. For decades, many among these millions have survived, however...