While most countries have managed to stamp out bird flu, eliminating the virus from poultry in the six countries where it remains endemic will take at least 10 years, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says in a new report. The H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1 HPAI), which was reported in 60 countries at its peak in 2006, remains “firmly entrenched” in Bangladesh, China, Egypt, India,...

The huge support for what Anna Hazare espoused came against the background of widespread corruption and government inaction. THE Anna Hazare mania that gripped large sections of society for five days from April 5, resulting in the government capitulating to his demand for including civil society activists in the committee for the drafting of an anti-corruption law, has baffled many people. The groundswell of support for his cause took the...

After having been beaten black and blue by Team Anna, the Congress party and the government are finally waking up to take the Gandhian on even as media managers in the party have so far not come out actively against the anti-corruption crusaders. While a senior Congress leader made it clear that party chief Sonia Gandhi is unlikely to reply to the publicly distributed letter of Anna Hazare which complains against...

Anna Hazare's fast puts Jan Lokpal on the nation's agenda, but doubts remain whether it will help root out corruption. A FUTURE historian who browses the archives of Indian newspapers and news websites from April 5 to 10 will be confused over how to characterise the groundswell of public support across the country for the “fast unto death” undertaken at Jantar Mantar, in New Delhi, by a social activist not...

To ask a people burdened with systemic bribery to accept bribe-giving as legal is to demand they accept corruption and the existing structures of power and inequity it flows from. Let's get this right. The Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, wants a certain class of bribes legalised? And says so in a paper titled “Why, for a Class of Bribes, the Act of Giving a...