In a new twist to the alleged Rs 5,600-crore scam in giving away contracts for ambulance and emergency healthcare services to a private party in 10 states, the Centre told the SC that though the funds for the services were from National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the onus rested with the state governments to ensure transparent bidding process. A PIL had alleged that it smelled a gigantic scam in former...

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore, Wangari Maathai, Desmond Tutu and a host of other celebrities descended here on Tuesday for the climate summit, rubbing shoulders with NGOs dressed as angels, penguins and trees. As television crews chased celebrities around the sprawling summit venue — the Bella Centre — and scrums broke out to enter the rooms where they were speaking, the relatively few NGO representatives allowed inside found innovative ways of spreading...

Rampur-Mathura (Uttar Pradesh): It is not yet 5 p.m. but the light has started fading in Rampur-Mathura, a village of barely 5,000 people, in Sitapur district. A group of village elders settle down comfortably in wooden chairs around a small fire lit under a tree. It is here that they gather every evening to discuss the day's events before retiring for the night. Until now, the village's busybodies used to keep...

Think environmentalists are stooges? You’re the unwitting recruit of a hugely powerful oil lobby.  The evidence of man-made global warming is unequivocal People behind climate denial campaigns know that their claims are untrue When you survey the trail of wreckage left by the climate emails crisis, three things become clear. The first is the tendency of those who claim to be the champions of climate science to minimise their importance. Those who...

The functioning of the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission has been rated as “satisfactory” by its chairperson, S.R. Nayak. This, however, comes with plenty of riders. If the commission is working, it is despite non-cooperation from the State Government in providing adequate staff and space and, worse still, active efforts by government representatives to bring discredit to the commission by indulging in “ill-conceived, motivated and misleading” attacks. Addressing a press...