While Indian psychiatrists have rejected a World Health Organisation (WHO) study portraying India as the depression capital of the world, they say it has indirectly drawn attention to an acute shortage of trained personnel and facilities to deal with mental illness. "Declaring India as having the highest rate of major depression in the world is an aberration in interpretation," Dr. Roy Abraham Kallivayalil, secretary-general of the World Association of Social Psychiatry,...

-The Indian Express   Seven farmers on Wednesday sat on a hunger strike in Dharamheri village to protest the construction of Hansi-Butana toe wall and to demand measures to check floods in the area. BKU (Ekta Dakaounda) Patiala district president Darshan Pal said that chain hunger strike would be observed till September 16 where alternate group of farmers would observe the strike daily. He added that if their demands were not met,...

Interview with social activist and Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal. THE organisational abilities of Arvind Kejriwal exhibited during the recent Jan Lokpal Bill movement earned him the sobriquet “Field Marshal of a peaceful agitation”. The social activist and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner played a significant role in conceiving the slogans, the symbolism and the trajectory of the movement. He is credited with anticipating some of the moves of the government...

Hypertension and diabetes seem to be rampant in two of India's most modern metropolises, Bangalore and Chennai. Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said under his department's programme to test people for the twin diseases, 14% and 21% were found to be suffering from diabetes and high blood pressure, respectively, in Banglaore. In Chennai, out of 3 lakhs tested, 50,000 were found to be diabetic and another 60,000 hypertensive. Azad described the...

-The Telegraph The government today introduced the Lokpal bill in the Lok Sabha amid protests by Anna Hazare’s group on the streets and the BJP in Parliament. While Hazare’s group dismissed the bill as a joke and burnt its copies, the BJP said that excluding the Prime Minister from the Lokpal’s ambit violated the constitutional scheme. As soon as the minister of state for personnel, V. Narayanasamy, moved the bill, Opposition leader...