The Prime Minister’s Council on India’s Nutrition Challenges has decided to overhaul nutrition programmes in the country after a series of negative international reports about its abysmal nutrition record. The panel met for the first time recently although it had been constituted in 2008 after the country was placed below Sudan and Zimbabwe in the Global Hunger Index. The meeting, convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was attended by agriculture minister Sharad...

The wife of a leading Indian human rights activist who has been sent to prison for helping Maoist rebels has said she may seek "political asylum". Ilina Sen, wife of Dr Binayak Sen, told reporters that she and her family were "not feeling safe in India" after her husband's incarceration. Last month Dr Sen was found guilty of carrying messages and setting up bank accounts for the rebels. Activists say the evidence against...

The Raipur sessions court judgment against civil liberties defender and health activist Binayak Sen has provoked outrage. His two-year long detention had drawn protests from the world over. The only substantial charge against Sen is that he passed on three letters from Narayan Sanyal, an undertrial, suspected -- but not yet proved -- to be a Maoist, to the Maoist leadership. It takes several leaps of imagination, or nasty prejudice, to...

Hidden behind all the administrative scandals that rocked India in 2010, illegal mining is an unnoticed beast that has been eating into the country's soul.   While corruption in spectrum allocation and the conduct of the Commonwealth Games are primarily about monetary loot, illegal mining is about invaluable non-renewable natural resources.   In at least five major states, there were more than 20,000 complaints of illegal mining filed, but the perpetrators carried on with...

The Indian government is exploring a proposal to reduce the limit on foreign direct investment (FDI) allowed in the pharmaceutical industry through the automatic route to 49% from 100% amid concerns over the takeover of local drug makers by overseas firms. Officials from the ministry of commerce and industry and the ministry of health have had multiple rounds of discussions on the proposal following a note written to them by the finance...