The Centre has drafted a health bill to ensure the right to health. However, health experts feel the bill will, instead, legitimise denial of health services to the poor. The Draft National Health Bill 2009 was prepared on the recommendations of the National Human Rights Commission to recognise and operationalise the right to healthcare. The demand for such a right was led by the Jan Swasthya Abhiyan, the Indian chapter...

The controversy around Bt brinjal has served at least one good purpose. The government has fast-tracked the process of setting up a biotechnology regulator. A regulatory authority is to be set up under an Act of Parliament. A longstanding proposal that has been gathering dust in the Department of Biotechnology has seen the light of day. The Union Cabinet is expected to consider this proposal and bring it to Parliament....

India's food inflation rose for the fourth straight week in early February, heightening worries that it was driving up headline inflation past official forecasts and increasing the chance of the central bank pushing up rates. The food price index rose 17.97 percent in the 12 months to February 6, higher than an annual rise of 17.94 percent in the previous week, data released on Thursday showed. The fuel price index rose...

Ban forward trading of wheat and rice and undertake de-hoarding measures urgently Make higher budgetary allocations for Primary Health Centres which need to be strengthened Worst hit by the prices of essentials, women groups on Tuesday presented their wish-list for the budget to the Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.“The spiralling rise in prices of essential commodities and inflation have had a particularly adverse impact on women, and on families from the more...

Issues today have to be dressed up in ways certified by the corporate media. They have to be justified not by their importance to the public but by their acceptability to the media, their owners and sponsors.  That the terrible tragedy in Pune demands serious, sober coverage is a truism. One of the side-effects of the ghastly blast has been unintended, though. The orgy of self-congratulation that marked the media...