Whether it was bureaucratic callousness or political cover-up, the fact that the only comprehensive survey of Bhopal gas victims ever to be undertaken has yet to see the light of day 25 years later is likely to add to the controversy surrounding the disaster. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) study was significant since it was the only comprehensive survey of the extent of damage wrought by the gas leak....

Driven by spiralling prices of essential items, inflation surged into double digits at 10.16 per cent in May, the highest in the last 19 months, adding to the woes of the common man. Soaring inflation, according to analysts, may prompt the Reserve Bank to tighten liquidity at its quarterly monetary policy review scheduled next month. The essential items which have become expensive, directly hitting the pocket of the common man, include pulses,...

A year after the World Health Organisation declared an Influenza A(H1N1) pandemic, a joint investigation by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has raised “troubling questions about how WHO managed conflicts of interest among the scientists who advised its pandemic planning, and about the transparency of the Science underlying its advice to governments.” The open access findings are published in the journal (“Conflicts of interest:...

Amflora is a kind of miracle potato: it is precious to the starch industry.  Johan Bergstrom, a blond and boyish man of 31, who farms here with his father, reached into the dark, soft soil and extricated a tennis-ball-size potato, holding it gently so as not to snap off any of a half-dozen white shoots that were growing out of the potato's eyes. He advised against tasting the potato, whose...

The Supreme Court on May 7 ruled that natural resources were national assets that belonged to the people and were ideally exploited by public sector undertakings. This obviously implies that local communities, including tribals, living on mineralised land, enjoy entitlements but not prescriptive ownership rights to such national assets. This is an important reiterative clarification defining mineral rights in Fifth Schedule areas that are currently in contention. Whether PSUs should...