-Tehelka AFTER A stormy night and a long flight, Rainer Sonntag Hermann reached Essen at 7 pm on 28 February. Hermann is the German tourist who was deported from Chennai the previous day on charges of being involved in the anti-nuke protests at Koodankulam. When TEHELKA tried to contact him via email, he replied, “The last two nights I had no bed and I’m very tired now. So, please allow me...

Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...

A global scramble for land and mineral resources fuelled by billions of investment dollars is threatening the last remaining wilderness and critical ecosystems, destroying communities and contaminating huge volumes of fresh water, warned environmental groups in London Wednesday. No national park, delicate ecosystem or community is off limits in the voracious hunt for valuable metals, minerals and fossil fuels, said the Gaia Foundation’s report, "Opening Pandora's Box". The intensity of the...

-IANS   In a major boost to the healthcare sector, total government expenditure on health would be increased to 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2017, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said on Wednesday. The decision was taken in a meeting held in the PMO on the government's priorities in health sector, particularly over the next five years. "The meeting decided that we must work towards increasing the total government health...

India has not reported a single polio case over the past one year, but Bihar has gone a step further by maintaining a clean slate for the past 16 months. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently deleted India from the list of polio endemic countries, the first time that the country has been ticked out of the map. The last polio case in India was reported from Howrah district of Bengal on...