-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Illegal mining in Uttar Pradesh between 2005-11 caused a loss of Rs 1,400 crore to the exchequer, says a draft report of the comptroller & auditor general. The report, prepared on the activities of state geology and mining directorate, belies state government's claims on checking illegal mining and indicates that illegal mining is widespread. It reveals several procedural gaps in legal quarrying as well. The auditors, who...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Big-ticket investment projects worth Rs 1.1 lakh crore, stuck for years for want of myriad government clearances, have finally got the green signal to start operations. The Centre has unravelled last-mile hurdles holding up 28 such projects at a time Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has identified the government's primary task as reinvigorating confidence in the Indian economy, with domestic players having virtually abandoned fresh investments. The clearances would...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Notwithstanding strong warnings by the parliamentary standing committee on health, new drugs continue to be approved for marketing in the country without holding any clinical trials on Indian patients to test their safety and efficacy. Sources in the Health Ministry admit that as many as 26 new drug molecules have been approved since 2010 without testing them through drug trials on local populations. While eight new drug molecules of biologicals...

-Economic and Political Weekly India has claims to many firsts, some on the wrong side; one being the highest proportion of malnourished children in the world, higher than several of the Poorer Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. Panagariya (2013) hypothesises that it is the flawed measurement methodology which is responsible for the reported high prevalence of malnutrition in Indian children (p 98). He further avers that Indian children may never attain the...

-Economic and Political Weekly Indian children are very short, on average, compared with children living in other countries. Because height reflects early life health and net nutrition, and because good early life health also helps brains to grow and capabilities to develop, widespread growth faltering is a human development disaster. Panagariya acknowledges these facts, but argues that Indian children are particularly short because they are genetically programmed to be so. In...