Dozens of countries are taking part in a United Nations-sponsored effort to protect potentially life-saving centuries-old traditional medicines from bio-piracy by learning from India how to halt their misappropriation through international patents granted on non-original innovations. Representatives from more than 35 countries wrapped up a three-day meeting in New Delhi today that discussed emulating India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL), a database documenting traditional medicinal treatment, concluding that such a mechanism...

Food inflation snapped a three-week easing trend in mid-March and Fuel inflation remained at elevated levels, keeping pressure on the Reserve Bank to rein in broader inflation. The food price index rose an annual 10.05% in the week to March 12, higher than a 9.42% rise in the previous week as prices of potatoes and vegetables rose, data released on Thursday showed. The Fuel price index climbed 12.79% in the same week,...

India's rural innovators have proved that ordinary people are indeed capable of extraordinary inventions. Despite many constraints -- lack of education and severe cash crunch -- most of them have succeeded in using technology cost-effectively to build ingenious products. A washing-cum-exercise machine, hand operated water lifting device, portable smokeless stove, automatic food making machine, solar mosquito killer, shock proof converter, a floating toilet soap are few of the products on display...

The new bribery revelations, a rigged process to import reactors and safety-related concerns must lead to the long-blocked scrutiny of the nuclear deal by Parliament. The world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl raises troubling questions about India's plans for a huge expansion of its nuclear power programme through reactor imports. Given its low per-capita energy consumption, India must generate far more electricity to economically advance. So it needs more nuclear-generated power....

Anti-nuclear campaigners in India see the earthquake that hit Japan last week, which threatens the meltdown of the Fukushima atomic power facility there, as a wakeup call for this country’s ambitious nuclear power programme. When India completed a nuclear power cooperation deal with the United States in October 2008, it threw open a 270 billion U.S. dollar market for nuclear reactors. Now members of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group are queuing...