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...

   Spurred in part by the debate over Bt brinjal, and in part by the controversy raised abroad by certain products based on nanotechnology, the government is planning to set up a regulatory board  in March that will examine all new nanotechnology devices before they are commercially marketed. “The reason we’ve had problems with Bt brinjal is that we don’t have a strong regulatory body,” C. R. N. Rao, scientific...

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....

The study was conducted in six States and is based on interviews of over 51,000 individuals  Findings also underscore the limited awareness on most sexual and reproductive matters Leading sources of information on sexual matters were friends and the media Less than one in three women know that a condom can be used just once, and just one in six know that a condom cannot disappear into a woman’s body. These are...

We urgently need legislation that specifically addresses child abuse.  The Indian Penal Code does not spell out the definition of child abuse as a specific offence Even the Juvenile Justice Act does not specifically address the issue of child sexual abuse The government's decision to introduce a set of guidelines for service providers in the tourism sector in a move to prevent a repeat of incidents like the rape of a Russian...