-The Hindu There is at last some clarity on the politics of the anti-corruption movements. Baba Ramdev’s dramatic call for Congress- hatao and the ‘political turn’ of the Anna movement have confirmed that a movement aimed at rooting out corruption cannot defer a direct encounter with party politics for very long. The manner in which both decisions were announced left something to be desired. The announcement by ‘Team Anna’ invited serious...

-The Hindu Universal electrification will remain a dream unless the government fixes the flaws in its much vaunted scheme to provide power to rural India In his Independence Day speech, the Prime Minister made the statement that “when the UPA Government came to power in 2004, we had promised that we would provide electricity to all villages.” He then went on to say: “Our next target is to provide electricity to each...

-The Hindu One of the first principles that students of auditing are taught is that auditors are watchdogs and not bloodhounds. The Manmohan Singh government would have us believe, in the wake of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s reports first in the 2G case and now in the coal mining issue, that this basic principle is being violated by the incumbent CAG. Why should the CAG comment on the...

-The Economic Times India has some of the best quaternary and tertiary care in the world and is gradually acquiring a name for itself even in the field of 'medical tourism'. Secondary care is still a significant challenge, but even in several smaller towns and district headquarters, there is a growing supply of maternity homes and multi-speciality secondary care facilities. At all of these levels of care, given the large disease burden...

-The Telegraph A global effort to create a vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that has abandoned dozens of candidate vaccines because of unsatisfactory trials has persuaded India to join its new vaccine-design strategy. The Translational Health Sciences and Technology Institute, a government research centre in a Haryana suburb near Delhi, will set up a laboratory for basic research to seek out molecules that can generate antibodies to effectively neutralise HIV. India’s...