-Tehelka Justice Sujata Manohar on how the Biotechnology Bill is fundamentally flawed IN THE last few years, regulatory systems across the board have been undergoing an overhaul to fit the needs of a new era. Likewise, new laws are being chalked out to meet new needs, and several are receiving flak owing to the loopholes and regressive grounds on which these have been drafted. The relatively more recent one to regulate modern...

The proposed National Food Security Bill (NFSB), under consideration of Standing Committee of Parliament, may be reviewed for procurement and distribution of maize or corn (under coarse grains scheme) at Rs 1 per kg to intended beneficiaries. Without going into the merits and demerits of ever-increasing subsidies under NFSB, corn for human consumption is highly vulnerable to impermissible limits of fungal toxicity — called “aflatoxins (B1, B2, G1, G2)”. There are...

-The Hindu A Lancet study reports that suicide is the second highest cause of death among the young The medical journal, The Lancet has published a study today which should bring attention to a little known human tragedy which is being played out across our country. The research is based on the first national survey of the causes of death, conducted in 2001-03, by the Registrar General of India. Many people die...

-The Hindu On May 5 this year, Tarun Sehrawat, a photographer with Tehelka, sent me a link to his most recent photo-essay on Abujmard, a Maoist-controlled area in Chhattisgarh. Tarun and I met on assignment in Dantewada in summer 2010 and had stayed in touch. A month-and-half later, last Friday, I attended his funeral after a fever he contracted in Abujmard proved fatal. Tarun died of cerebral malaria; he was 22. I came...

Social protection has seen a sharp focus in the development policy agenda during the past decade. There is also a clear trend for making social protection, as well as food security, “rights-based”, rather than “discretionary”. Yet, no clear consensus has so far emerged concerning many basic design choices and implementation modalities. The Food Security Act 2011, which is now under the consideration of our parliament, is designed to achieve the...