NGOs hail change in India's stand on listing Long-term exposure to asbestos can harm health: studies Canada is stalling the listing of chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) at the Conference of Parties to the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent, meeting in Geneva. On Wednesday, India changed its stand and supported the listing. Listing will mandate the exporting countries to give prior data on the mineral to the importing nations to enable them to...

-The Hindu   There is good news for 47.50 lakh domestic workers in the country: they will now be entitled to health insurance cover under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). The extension of the medical insurance scheme, approved by the Union Cabinet here on Thursday, envisages smart card-based cashless health insurance cover of up to Rs. 30,000 annually to below poverty line workers in any empanelled hospital in the country. The RSBY will...

The health ministry has erected bureaucratic hurdles against a bio-pesticide for mosquito control developed by Indian researchers, denying it entry into the public health programme while accepting similar imported products, scientists and entrepreneurs have said. The bio-pesticide was developed at the Vector Control Research Centre (VCRC) in Puducherry during the 1980s. It is a powder or spray formulation containing a bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis that can kill the larvae of several...

From the Middle East to Madagascar, high prices are spawning land grabs and ousting dictators. Welcome to the 21st-century food wars. In the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75 percent, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10. If, however, you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in...

A thinking government, regional or central, would ensure sustainable wages for skilled artisans and help them market the handcrafted products, instead of letting them join the NREGS queue. The design and execution of the much-touted National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) are likely to leave a lasting impact on some areas of our economy. Surely, the prototype version did not foresee that it would act as a catalyst for changes that...