It is a little known fact that in roughly a fifth of our country’s land area, a different legal system operates. In some of these places, if you are caught with certain items, it is up to you to prove that you are innocent of a crime — and whether you go to jail depends on whether a government official kept proper records years earlier. If you are using some...

“Efforts of Empowered Committee set up to monitor the works ineffective” The third report of the Shunglu Committee on “City Infrastructure,” which has been submitted to the Prime Minister and “is being examined,” has severely indicted the Delhi government for its handling of the works and also noted that the efforts of the Empowered Committee, constituted to overlook them, were also “by and large ineffective.” It said while Rs.254 crore in ‘undue...

Without additional funding in the battle against tuberculosis for research, improved prevention, early diagnosis and treatment, some 8 million people will die from what is largely a curable disease between now and 2015, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today. “There is cause for optimism,” he said in a message marking World Tuberculosis Day. “The recent adoption of a fast and powerful new diagnostic tool promises to accelerate international gains against the disease. “At...

“Most common TB test is more than 125 years old; TB drugs are more than 40 years old” Microsoft chairman and philanthropist Bill Gates on Thursday said the large number of deaths in the world due to tuberculosis was unacceptable and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was all for supporting a low-cost affordable vaccine for the disease. “Whatever helps the poorest, we are committed to it,'' Mr. Gates said at...

The latest iteration of the Mental Health Care Bill is expected to put strong checks on the use of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), which is used rampantly in India. Popularly known as shock therapy, it involves administering precise electric shocks to the brain to stimulate specific nerve cells, to kick-start severely depressed patients. It has been demonised in movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — the violent seizures, and...