-Down to Earth   Punjab has been in the grip of cancer for over a decade but the government has ignored the threat.  It all started with a knot in her left breast. Within no time it grew to the size of a tennis ball. In pain, 40-year-old Raj Rani went to the doctor in her village in Punjab’s Ferozepur district. Finding no relief, she started doing the rounds of government hospitals in...

Regulations covering public health should override personal rights and the country cannot wait any more for a good public health law. The health care industry, including institutions of medical education, hospitals and pharmaceutical businesses, have grown into behemoths that can do considerable harm in the absence of independent and effective regulatory systems. While there are no success stories in the regulation of any kind of industry in India, I will focus...

-The Economic Times Heaps of dusty files continue to grow in government buildings and sensitive papers are mysteriously lost, leaked or dramatically reduced to ashes in fires while the six-year-old plan to modernise and digitise governance remains tied up in what it should eliminate - red tape. The latest casualty was the Union home ministry, where a fire was reported on Sunday, days after a blaze engulfed Mumbai's Mantralaya, killing people and...

-PTI Study claims more than half of them died in the first 28 days of their life More than 16.8 lakh children under five years died of infectious, but preventable, diseases in India in 2010 and more than half of them could not complete the first month of their life, a new study has claimed. Of the total deaths, 52 per cent, or about 0.875 million, were among the children who died in...

The government is planning to tighten the rules for issuing and renewing driving licences to make the process “fudge proof” after a study showed drivers’ fault accounted for most road accidents in the country. A committee of state transport commissioners and officials from the National Informatics Centre recently came up with suggestions on possible amendments to the rules. The panel, headed by Andhra Pradesh transport commissioner Hiralal Samariya, has submitted its report...