Within weeks of getting bail from the Supreme Court in connection with charges of sedition, human rights activist Binayak Sen has been made member of the Planning Commission's Steering Committee on Health, which will advise the panel on the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2012-2017). Binayak Sen, who was released on bail from the Raipur jail last month, will, based on his experience of having worked as a paediatrician in Chhattisgarh's tribal belt,...

Endosulfan, the pesticide which is widely believed to be responsible for thousands of deaths, diseases and devastation, was able to save its own life largely because of India’s questionable efforts at global forums. The controversial pesticide has been in news for a long time because of its harmful effects on humans, wild life and the environment. Obviously the $100 million industry is going out of the way to defend the...

Arms deals, sensitive organizations like the Indian space agency besides the prime minister will be under the jurisdiction of the proposed Lokpal or national ombudsman, N. Santosh Hegde, a member of the 10-member drafting panel said Monday. The panel proposed 'to bring arms deals, organisations like ISRO, besides the prime minister under the Lokpal purview', Hegde, Karnataka ombudsman and a civil society member of the drafting panel, said at a meeting...

Lawyer and co-chairman of the joint draft committee on the Lokpal Bill, Shanti Bhushan, has urged Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram to make public the report prepared by the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL), Chandigarh, on the controversial CD containing his purported conversation with Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Mulayam Singh and former SP leader Amar Singh. The Chandigarh CFSL report said the CD was a “cut-and-paste” job, contradicting the Delhi lab...

That India marries off its daughters in such a hurry that they have little time to grow out of their teens is a fact that no longer raises eyebrows. But what should come as a shock to a country that preens itself over its growing economic prowess is that we fare worse than sub-Saharan Africa, or for that matter, all of Africa put together, when it comes to child marriage. If...