-Down to Earth UPA gives sops under MGNREGS to attract rural voters ahead of elections WITH most of its recent schemes struggling, a desperate UPA government is pinning its hopes on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to win votes in 2014 elections. The government is overhauling the employment scheme that helped it return to power in 2009 for a reason. It touches the lives of over 55 per cent...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: It is well known that quality of life greatly varies amongst different states within India. Some states have greater industrial or agricultural output, higher income levels, better educational and health indicators while others are still struggling with backwardness. But what is much less known is that within states too there are wide and astonishing variations. State level averages often hide huge and unconscionable disparity on...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The new draft protocol for clinical trials of drugs, on the lines suggested by the Supreme Court, is making it difficult for global drug manufacturers to find subjects for testing new chemical compositions. The protocol has made it mandatory for companies intending to conduct human trials of drugs to video-record the free consent of patients to be part of the trial. It also mandates them to...

-The Indian Express New studies find Delhi more polluted than Beijing despite green measures such as the Metro and CNG. The main culprit in the undoing of the advantage, experts feel, is the addition of 1,000 vehicles daily. New Delhi: The advantage Delhi sought to gain from a series of environment-friendly measures, such as its Metro network and fleet of CNG buses and autos, has been lost with the levels of pollutants...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A global analysis of how nations tackle environmental challenges has ranked India 155 among 178 nations and labelled the country's air quality among the worst in the world, tying it with China in exposing its population to hazardous air pollution. The Environmental Performance Index 2014, generated by researchers at Yale University in the US, has bracketed India among "bottom performers" on several indicators such as environmental health...