The World Health Organisation (WHO) has adopted a resolution that focuses on the global burden of mental disorders and the need for a comprehensive, coordinated response from health and social sectors at the country level. United States of America and Switzerland supported the resolution moved by India at the just-concluded 130{+t}{+h}executive board meeting of the WHO. This marks the first time in over a decade that the WHO has, at its highest...

-The Hindu   “The intent is clear. Keep the people drugged so they do not revolt against poverty” Press Council of India (PCI) Chairman Justice Markandey Katju on Sunday called upon journalists to play a seminal role in promoting scientific and rational ideas in society and raise the intellectual level of the masses by extricating them from the morass of superstition, casteism, bigotry, communalism and feudal tendencies. Delivering the Jhabarmal Sharma memorial lecture here,...

The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it...

-The Hindu   Suggest “necessary preventive” measures to safeguard the interest of workers   Trade union groups on Monday pitched for a worker-oriented Budget for 2012-13 aimed at removing poverty and unemployment and suggested “necessary preventive” measures to safeguard the interests of workers. At their meeting here with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee — the second in the series of the customary pre-Budget consultations — representatives of trade unions (TUs) proposed that wages of contract labour...

Agriculture sector undergoes a historic change as livestock surpasses the economy of food grain Policy makers in India are finally acknowledging a structural shift in the agriculture sector they have been noticing for a decade. Economic contribution of livestock is today more than that of food grain crops. Traditionally, of the three components of the sector—crops, livestock and fisheries—crops drove the growth, and food grains are a major part of it....