-The Guardian Half of Indians have no toilet. It's one of many gigantic failures that have prompted Nobel prize-winning academic Amartya Sen to write a devastating critique of India's economic boom The roses are blooming at the window in the immaculately kept gardens of Trinity College, Cambridge and Amartya Sen is comfortably ensconced in a cream armchair facing shelves of his neatly catalogued writings. There are plenty of reasons for satisfaction...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: As patent wars heat up in the pharma space, Mobile Phone messages and Right to Information filings have emerged as potent weapons in the hands of multinationals keen to delay competition from low-cost generic versions of their patented products in India. Innovator drugmakers, who used to strike with patent suits after generic drugmakers released their versions in the market, have started gleaning information from text messages sent...

-The Business Standard The service would be launched across the country to provide information, advisories and services for India's 120 mn farmers Following the footsteps of services like Reuters Market Light (RML) of Thompson Reuters and Dr. Dekalb Farm Care of Monsanto India, the Union department of agriculture is starting its own SMS-based farm information and advisory service to be called the Kisaan SMS. According to an official statement, the SMS-based service would...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The World Health Organisation wants India's public to give up Bollywood songs as caller tunes on their Mobile Phones and replace them with short health messages from superstars of India's entertainment industry. The global health agency today launched what is being dubbed as the world's first attempt to promote health campaigns via caller tunes, drawing on the voices of 10 personalities from Bollywood and other entertainment sectors. Amitabh Bachchan's...

-The Hindu Indentured labour may be a forgotten part of our colonial economic history but Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh are still sending ‘Girmitya' to toil in distant lands The descendants of indentured labourers, who migrated from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to erstwhile colonies, recently met at The Hague in the Netherlands to commemorate 140 years of migration - perpetuated through a system popularly known as ‘Girmit.' They gathered from all...