-The Economic Times Drug companies paid as little as 50,000 as compensation to families of volunteers who died during clinical trials for new medicines last year, leading to sharp criticism about the paltry sums being handed out and growing clamour among health groups for more stringent guidelines on new drug trials.  According to government data accessed by a healthcare activist through an RTI query, Germany's Fresenius Kabi paid 50,000 each to the...

-Live Mint Maruti Suzuki India Ltd’s Manesar plant was witness to prolonged labour strife last year, but the violence unleashed on Wednesday that led to one person being killed caught its victims completely unawares. “Some of us jumped off the first floor to save our lives as we saw a mob of workers, hundreds of them, rushing towards us,” one of the injured Maruti officials told reporters at a hospital in Gurgaon...

-PTI With the twin objectives of preventing corrosion of tracks and providing odourless toilets to passengers, railways are replacing existing ones with bio-toilets. "While some green toilets designed by DRDO are already being manufactured and fitted in coaches, we are committed to manufacture 25,00 bio-toilets in the current fiscal," said a senior Railway Ministry official. The problem of environmental degradation and corrosion of tracks due to night soil has been engaging the attention...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Where will the nuclear waste from the Kudankulam nuclear power plant be kept and what are the Centre's plans to process the spent fuel to ensure that it does not damage the environment? This is what the Madras high court, hearing a batch of public interest petitions on the nuclear plant, wants to know from the Centre. But in the absence of the additional solicitor-general (ASG) of...

-Kafila.org Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled ‘Mother India’ that criticized the Indian way of living, and Rudyard Kipling  spoke of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. These writings reflected the colonial perspective that what colonizers did was in the best interest of the colonized people. Consequently, most well-meaning citizens of colonial powers were alienated from the horrible plight of the colonized. Purpose well served – unopposed exploitation. Years later,...