The absence of a law regulating surrogacy makes India, especially Anand, a top destination for couples from abroad. UNTIL about 2008, the future looked bleak for Sharadaben Solanki. A landless daily-wage worker in Anand, Gujarat, she earned a paltry Rs.600 a month. Her husband earned an equal amount working as a construction labourer. Together the couple supported three children and their parents. That was when she heard from Maganbhai, the owner of...

-DNA   Water scarcity is the main reason behind the suicide of farmers according to an approach paper on the 12th Five Year Plan (2012 to 2017) prepared by two Tamil Nadu-based experts. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, one farmer commits suicide every 30 minutes. The main cause of these suicides is non-availability of water at the initial stage of the crops leading to the ruining of crops and the subsequent...

-The Telegraph   A myth is being sold to the people of West Bengal by those who claim that the state will “move ahead of several” others if it is renamed, data available in the public domain and collated by The Telegraph have established. The statistics show that meetings that decide resource allocation by the Centre are not decided on the basis of an inflexible alphabetical order. Each state’s preparedness to make presentations...

-PTI   India should move on to make nuclear energy as safe as possible by taking lessons from the recent Fukushima accident but its imperative to replace the old-era Land Acquisition Act with a more balanced one, to address the country's present huge infrastructure and energy needs, former Atomic Energy Commission Chairman M R Srinivasan said here. Stating that the resettlement was equally significant in any infrastructure project, he said India's record of...

-The Telegraph   Labour laws will not be eased for the proposed national manufacturing investment zones (NMIZs), and there will be administrative arrangements for quick relief to workers in case a unit is closed. The government plans to generate 100 million jobs within a decade in these proposed zones. Proposals of flexible labour laws in these zones, which may have allowed hire-and-fire policies, had come under criticism from trade unions and as a...