-Down to Earth New laws to regulate sand mining have not had much impact Illegal sand mining is a perennial problem in India. But it assumes gargantuan proportions right before the onset of monsoon because swollen rivers make extraction extremely difficult during the rainy season. To make most of the lean period, mine owners and hoarders try to dig out as much sand as possible, through legal and illegal means, in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The sale of drug combinations containing last-resort antibiotics is rising faster than overall antibiotics sales in India, health researchers have said in a study that also highlights the government's failure to stop the sale of irrational and unapproved antibiotic cocktails. While total antibiotics sales in India rose 26 per cent over a four-year period, says the study, there was a 174 per cent increase in the sales of...

-The Pioneer Diwali is four days away, and the state of Delhi’s air has gone to the dogs with the National Air Quality Index (NAQI) stating on Sunday that air pollution has spiked to severest “dark red”, strengthening arguments of many who claimed that the Supreme Court was “misled into believing that Banning firecrackers during Diwali would clean city’s air”. The worsening pollution level substantiates their argument that the problem lies somewhere...

-TheWire.in India is one of the countries with the “lowest reduction in hunger” in the nine years since the last Global Hunger Index was calculated. India is still scraping the barrel to feed it’s hungry. According to the new global hunger rankings by the Global Hunger Index (GHI), India has been ranked 100 out of 119 countries. India’s performance on the GHI is described by the report as being “serious” in its...

-TheWire.in The T.K. Viswanathan committee’s recommendations could prove to be dangerous for free speech if acted upon without resolving its flaws. It was reported last week that an expert committee headed by T.K. Viswanathan, former secretary general of Lok Sabha, recommended that the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Information Technology Act be amended to include stringent penal provisions regarding online hate speech. While this report has...