Jharkhand has thrown up the sharpest signal of the link between urbanisation and diabetes in a survey covering three states and a Union Territory. The study by the Indian Council of Medical Research and collaborating institutions, the first to cover entire states, has shown that 13 people in 100 have diabetes in urban Jharkhand but just three per 100 in the state’s rural areas. Projections from the survey, which has covered Jharkhand,...

Public health experts blame it on government complacency THE World Health Organization has raised alarm over leprosy spreading across India. With the disease infecting about 120,000 people every year, the country is now the biggest contributor to the global leprosy burden, the UN body said in a press release. The Union health ministry had declared the disease, which causes lesions on the skin and attacks nerves in the hands and feet, often...

Is the Bill within the legislative competence of Parliament? Yes. All provisions in Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal Bill are within the legislative competence of Parliament, including the provisions relating to Lokayuktas in the States. Some confusion is being spread in the media that Parliament cannot enact all the provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill, particularly those relating to the Lokayuktas in the States, a law for which will have to be...

Ardent admirers of the Supreme Court will credit it with starting three revolutions in the past three decades. In the 1980s the public interest litigation (PIL) movement opened the doors of the court to every citizen, especially those who could not reach it due to poverty, illiteracy or backwardness. Around the same time, the court sowed the seeds of citizens’ right to know in a few judgments, asserting that sunlight is...

-Express News Service   An RTI activist from Union Territory of Diu who had sought information in connection with the construction of an allegedly illegal restaurant and bogus licence issued by Road Transport Office to bike vendors has been allegedly attacked by local politicians and government officers. Jaisukh Bambhania ,39, president of Diu auto-rickshaw drivers’ association, was attacked with sharp weapons and pipes on Sunday night. Later, acid was thrown on him. Bambhania has...