-The Hindu The Commerce and Industry Ministry, on Thursday, issued new guidelines for pharmaceutical makers to comply with the European Union (EU) Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards. In a statement issued here, the Ministry says such a move will give a boost to pharma exports from India. "India has demonstrated its keenness to meet international requirements for exports of pharmaceutical products yet again by taking timely action for complying with the new...

-Tehelka Close to 30 percent of forests have been converted to Chir Pine monocultures displacing grazing rights of several communities like the Gaddis and Gujjars. There is no quantitative assessement of the impact of loss on people's lives The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, or Recognition of Forest Rights Act - commonly known as the Forest Rights Act (FRA) was passed by Parliament in 2006 to address historical injustices...

-The Hindu   As TRAI prepares to regulate ownership of news organisations to ensure pluralism, big media houses fear shrinking profits and state control by proxy Rahul Khullar, the straight-talking chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), listened attentively to the senior management executive of Bennett Coleman and Co. Limited, one of India's largest media conglomerates. The latter disagreed with the premise of the discussion - that there was a "problem,"...

-The Hindu Chennai: Social activist Medha Patkar met residents affected by the Chennai airport expansion project here in Manapakkam on Wednesday. After meeting the residents at a gathering in Manapakkam, she told mediapersons the State government must denotify the lands acquired from the residents for the expansion work, since Airport Authority of India (AAI) had said that some of the allotted land might not be needed. "Though the experts have told that so...

-Frontline The Central government's proposal to hand over the supply of supplementary nutrition to NGOs in the name of "community participation" is surely an invitation for private profiteering on the back of this supposedly public scheme. ENSURING safe and healthy conditions for the reproduction of the population is obviously the most fundamental requirement of any society. So the progress of a society can be determined (and indeed is routinely judged) by the...