On a wall on Station Road, among posters of Khoonkar Darinde and The Dirty Picture, Amitabh Bachchan looks out of a row of yellow-and-red posters and says, “Do boond har baar.” Here in Moradabad, the town in western Uttar Pradesh that till recently Exported, besides its intricate brassware, strains of the deadly polio virus, the posters have been around for long. The writing on the wall was clear: this was...

Madhya Pradesh accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the total area under certified organic farming in the country. Though most of it is due to cotton fields, the state has an immense potential to bring even food crops under organic cultivation.   What may help the state’s cause is that agriculture is already organic by default in many tribal-dominated districts because farmers either don't have the resources to use chemical fertilizers...

India seems to have arrived at the threshold of polio eradication, but should it lower its guard? ON January 13, India achieved what had only two years ago seemed impossible in the immediate term. The country, which, given the epidemiological data in the new millennium, had come to be regarded by health experts around the world as one that would be the last to achieve freedom from polio (poliomyelitis), recorded no...

The commerce ministry will announce rules to simplify and rationalize procedures to revive special economic zones, hoping to draw investors to these enclaves once touted as centres of Export excellence.  The changes, which will be notified in a week, could include a reduction the minimum-area requirement, easier vacancy and contiguity norms and allowing multi-product SEZs in sector-specific zones.  "There will be reforms and changes in policies pertaining to SEZs mainly to simplify...

In the absence of legislation to protect women from sexual harassment at the workplace, the Supreme Court in 1997 laid down guidelines in the Vishaka vs State of Rajasthan in 1997. Thirteen years later, Parliament came up with the “Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010”. However, the Bill sees sexual harassment at the workplace not as a criminal offence but as a mere civil wrong, the...