It is disappointing that the government has not taken any steps to provide for the Food Security Bill, which is in Parliament, in this budget. A significant announcement on it was anticipated this year; that would have been the only way to see it roll out in 2012. Now, I think, the government must be bargaining for legal processes to take over, which we know will take some time, before...

National AIDS Control Programme urged to move beyond medicine-centric approach The government programmes for children suffering from HIV/AIDS should move from medicine-centric approach to include nutrition and preventive care, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has recommended. In its recently released report ‘Rights and entitlements of children affected and infected by HIV/AIDS 2010-11’, the organisation also advocated provisions for issuing BPL cards to children who have lost their...

As the biotech industry takes heart from the prime minister’s remark, a fresh report shows India’s regulation and expertise on GM crops are sloppy BUOYED by the prime minister’s remark that NGOs were responsible for the moratorium on the release of GM or Bt brinjal, the biotech industry is stepping up its campaign to get it lifted along with “all constraints in the research and development work of biotech crops”. It...

Almost half the women born in India are married off before they turn 18, while 18 per cent of them are below 15, according to a Unicef report that shows legal and other measures have done little to curb child marriage. Among those married, 22 per cent became mothers before they got the right to vote. The figures are part of a report brought out by the organisation on the State of...

In a spate of recent cases in Punjab, information seekers are being turned away by public institutions on the ground that they are not covered under the RTI Act, and are not obliged to share information about their functioning. This despite the fact that almost all these institutions have received financial aid from the state government.   In nearly all such cases, the information seekers had to knock the doors of Information...