-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Basmati rice exports to the US have plunged because many Indian firms are under an import alert by the US authorities, leading to a detailed scrutiny for pesticide residue in every grain being shipped out. This has raised costs, upset schedules and obstructed sales, prompting exporters to seek government intervention. In the first quarter of calendar year 2013, exports were down to 19,583 tonne. With 31 Indian...

-The Economic Times Anshu Prakash is worried about what he calls "mischievous propaganda" by "some people" who he thinks are misleading reporters. The joint secretary at the ministry of health and family welfare starts off by flatly denying that the joint monitoring mission (JMM) set up by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the government of India (GoI) discussed the impending danger of a TB drugs stock-out in August 2012. "There was...

-The Hindu There has to be a national mission to ensure that rural homes have access to clean cooking fuel and stoves instead of the killer chulhas that are claiming the lives of large numbers of women A large section of our country's population, nearly 75 per cent of rural and 22 per cent of urban households, still uses biomass for daily cooking. An estimated 80 per cent of the residential energy...

-Newsclick.in A few weeks back Fortune magazine and CNN carried a long online blog titled ‘Dirty Medicine' by Dinesh Thakur, a former employ of Ranbaxy, where he recounts how he came across several procedural and other lapses in the company's manufacturing facilities. Since then the Fortune blog has become one of the most widely circulated and commented upon business stories in the world. The story received attention as it came in the...

-Outlook As the Manmohan Singh government makes evident its unfriendliness to villages, the nation hurtles towards disaster. It's a danger no one wants to face. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying for years to make us believe that agriculture is a vast marshland in which a huge population is stuck ankle- to neck-deep and it is his duty to rescue them. "Our salvation lies in moving people out of agriculture," he...