A five-year effort to promote condom use by sex workers and their clients and the use of safe needles by drug users may have helped India prevent about 100,000 HIV infections, according to a study to be released tomorrow. The study suggests that the high-profile HIV prevention initiative called Avahan, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented in six states, was less effective in Nagaland, Manipur and Maharashtra...

The government's new guidelines for cybercafes will deepen the digital divide while doing nothing to curb terrorism. Following last month's tragic bomb blast at the Delhi High Court, in which over 13 people were killed, police traced an email from the ‘Harkat-ul-Jihad' claiming responsibility for the attack to a cybercafe in Kishtwar, Jammu and Kashmir, and arrested three people, including the owner. In fact, many recent terrorist attacks have been linked to...

-AP   An estimated 100,000 people in India may have escaped HIV infection over five years thanks to one of the world’s biggest prevention programmes, an encouraging sign that targeting high-risk groups remains vital even as more donors focus on treatment, a new study suggests. While the initial findings regarding the $258 million Avahan project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, come with large uncertainty due to data LIMitations and methodology,...

-The Times of India   Just when sections in the Congress and the government have questioned the procedures of the CAG, the rural development ministry under Jairam Ramesh has invited the government auditor to inspect the accounts of UPA's flagship programme MGNREGA. Sources in the rural development ministry said the CAG earlier could not audit MGNREGA accounts because of some "ambiguities" which had now been done away with after Jairam's intervention. They...

The underlying assumption of the proposed Land Acquisition Bill seems that the price paid to farmers is unreasonably low due to dominant power of industrial buyers, requiring government intervention. The draft, however, may neither accelerate the pace of land acquisition for industry nor overcome the psychological barriers of landowners that impede land transfers. First, the psychological barriers that LIMit supply. One of the main reasons for the farmers’ (and land dependents’)...