The Millennium Development declaration was a visionary document, which sought partnership between rich and poor nations to make globalisation a force for good. Its signatories agreed to explicit goals on a specific timeline. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set ambitious targets for reducing hunger, poverty, infant and maternal mortality, for reversing the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria and giving children basic education by 2015. These also included gender equality,...

Our right to know includes the right to know what we eat. We live in a transgenic age, one in which it is no longer sufficient for food labelling to stop with listing such things as nutritional values, chemical additives, and possible allergens. Although there is no Evidence that approved genetically modified food is unsafe for human consumption, people have the right to choose not to eat it for ideological,...

More than 200 tax investigators in India have searched the offices of a number of contractors used in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games. The raids in Delhi came as the main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), demanded a parliamentary investigation. The Games, which ended last week in Delhi, were marred by spiralling costs and allegations of corruption. The BJP says it has Evidence of wrongdoing at government...

A Greenpeace India delegation Tuesday met the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture and demanded a ban on Genetically Modified (GM) crops, saying that they were a threat to the country's agriculture, food safety and environment. The delegation made a presentation before the standing committee and presented Evidence and credible publications outlining the threats posed by GM crops. 'We want the committee to make recommendations that will ensure a sustainable future for our...

The report of the Javid Chowdhury Committee facilitated the resumption, in February 2010, of vaccine production in the three public sector units, one in Himachal Pradesh and the other two in Tamil Nadu. Javid Chowdhury, a former Health Secretary of the Government of India, recommended that the suspension of their licenses for manufacturing vaccines in 2008 should be revoked in the public interest and on the strength of the compliance...