-Kashmir Times If psychologist Ashis Nandy had planned to ignite a potentially ugly controversy at the Jaipur Literary Festival, he couldn't have done better than by insinuating intimate links between corruption and Dalits, Adivasis and Other Backward Classes. After warning that he was about to make a "very undignified" and "almost vulgar" statement, "which will shock you", Nandy said: "It is a fact that most of the corrupt come from the...

-The Indian Express Despite the tall claims of the UP government of providing pollution-free water at Sangam, Allahabad, devotees at Kumbh continue to take their holy dip in polluted water. The latest report of UP Pollution Control Board (UPPCB), the Bio-chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) at Sangam is around 5 mg/litre, much above the permissible limit of 3 mg/ltr. BOD is an indication of the organic quality of water and increases with...

-Live Mint Developments a part of reforms initiated after apex court’s intervention to amend Drugs and Cosmetics Act The health ministry has tightened the norms for clinical trials by making it mandatory for companies to compensate patients who may suffer injury or death while participating in the trials even if they have not been caused by the drugs being tested.   So far, the compensation has been restricted only to cases where the...

-IPS News Officials at the World Bank are forcefully rejecting a new internal evaluation that is highly critical of the institution’s decade-long forest policy, expressing their “strong disagreement” with some assertions in the report. The assessment, written by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the World Bank Group’s auditor, warns that expectations for poverty reduction as envisioned in the bank’s 2002 Forest Strategy “have not yet been met”. The report is particularly critical...

The Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF) has been the target of criticism from industry groups to the Prime Minister for allegedly holding up infrastructure and industrial development through its system of green clearances. But a recent analysis of 5 years of decision-making put out by an environmental group suggests why these attacks might be misplaced, given the ease with which every single of 262 proposed hydropower and irrigation projects...