The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy is planning to create a fund to help entrepreneurs who are setting up domestically engineered solar power plants in the country. Many project developers feel the pinch while buying solar equipment from domestic manufacturers because cheaper Chinese and US solar panels are available in the market.

Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s budget goodibag had very little to give to renewable energy. Exemptions were announced only for solar thermal plant, leaving sectors like solar PV, wind and biomass completely untouched.

In a landmark judgment for cancer patients, Indian patent office has allowed generic drug manufacturer Natco Pharma Ltd to make and sell an anti-cancer drug Nexavar patented by Bayer Healthcare of Germany. This is the first ever compulsory license issued to a generic drug company in India to legally manufacture a drug while the patent is still operational.

What is Solairedirect all about?

At least 103 babies die for every 1,000 live births in Shravasti, a district in Uttar Pradesh that borders Nepal, reports the Annual Health Survey 2010-11. Though this first-of-its-kind district-wise survey is limited to nine most backward states, the number is the worst in the country. Infant mortality rate (IMR) is less than six in the European Union.

The Supreme Court of India has issued notices to the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh government in connection with clinical drug trials being conducted across India. This follows a public interest petition filed by an Indore based non-profit, seeking the court's intervention to put a stop to unethical clinical trials. Reports of unethical trials conducted on children and mentally challenged patients in Madhya Pradesh surfaced recently in various media reports. The petition filed by Swasthya Adhikar Manch was admitted by the court on February 6.

The telecom industry is finding it difficult to implement the recent directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on cutting carbon emissions. DoT had issued directions on January 4, wherein it asked the service providers to frame a Carbon Credit Policy detailing methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

A lower court in Argentina has fined GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) US $92,786 for conducting unethical clinical trials of a pneumonia vaccine on 15,000 babies in the country. It is reported that most of the infants recruited for the trial were from poor families who attended public hospitals. However GSK, Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company, has denied charges and will soon file an appeal against the ruling in the Supreme Court of Argentina.

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Over a year ago, the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) undertook an exercise to assess pollution levels in some of the highly polluted industrial areas of India. It then released a list of 43 most polluted areas, terming them critically polluted, and imposed a moratorium on their expansion. The aim of the whole effort was to identify areas that required urgent intervention and pollution abatement measures. The exercise proved futile as these areas remain highly polluted and have brought no change in the lives of people living near them.

Ask Priyabrata Kanjilal, a grocery store owner in one of the bylanes of south Kolkata, for a Vim washing bar. Chances are he will produce an egg (dim in Bengali), for he cannot distinguish between the two words. Twenty years at the store has taken a toll on his hearing ability. During his eight hours at the store it’s not the good old radio that he listens to, but the steady groan of traffic on the 4.5-metre alley. Impatient honks and noise of trucks, buses, autorickshaws, cars and bikes are a constant. The 50-year-old is also a captive listener of the many religious, social and political processions that often pass through the road, all expressing their emotions through blaring loudspeakers.

Trade agreements with stiff intellectual property protection requirements combined with buyouts of India’s top generics makers by multinationals threaten to deny affordable medicines to millions of poor.

The trade dispute between the US and China over renewable energy equipment is growing shriller. The Wind Tower Trade Coalition (WTTC), a coalition of producers of wind towers in the US, has filed a complaint with the US Department of Commerce and International Trade Commission seeking anti-dumping and countervailing investigations into the Chinese and Vietnamese wind towers imports in the US market. Two similar probes against China are already underway.

After getting the Lokpal and Lokayuktas Bill passed in Lok Sabha on Tuesday, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government introduced it in the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. The bill was introduced despite the Congress not having sufficient numbers to ensure the pasage of the bill in the upper house. Many political parties, including certain UPA allies, are opposed to certain provisions of the controversial bill.

THE National AIDS Control Organisation in November procured in bulk anti-HIV drug stavudine, which is being phased out worldwide. NACO officials unofficially cite funds crunch for depending on the low-cost drug. Stavudine requires less monitoring of patients, they say. NACO provides free treatment to HIV/AIDS patients in the country.

The committee constituted by the Madhya Pradesh government to prepare guidelines to regulate drug trials in the state has recommended restarting the trials.

The state government had put a ban on any new clinical trials in October last year following reports of unethical drug trials. The medical education department of the government had asked the committee to give recommendations on how to effectively regulate clinical trials. The committee submitted its report last month but did not suggest any punishment for those responsible for conducting unethical trials. 

Flamingos are dropping dead in one of their favourite breeding grounds on earth. In the saline flats of Gujarat the birds accidentally collide with or get electrocuted by high-tension cables and telephone lines that pass over their breeding grounds in the Rann of Kachchh. Residents and ornithologists say they witness mass deaths of the pink-feathered bird across the region every year. But the state forest department says it has reports of 139 flamingo deaths only this breeding season.

AFTER years of dilly-dallying, the pollution control board finally issued closure notice to Gujarat Enviro Protection Infrastructure Limited (GEPIL) on November 30. The Surat-based waste management company was caught disposing of hazardous waste into the Mindhola River flowing by the city.

The world is witnessing an increase in trade disputes in the renewable energy sector. Countries are trying to strengthen their renewable energy base by preferring indigenous products over imports. This is an obvious dampener for countries with good renewable energy equipment manufacturing capabilities and advanced technology. They argue that such policy measures hinder free trade. Their complaints at the World Trade Organization (WTO) are piling up. India is the latest to be in
the spotlight.
 

The Supreme Court declined to entertain a petition seeking a stay on all proposed nuclear power plants in India on November 14, during preliminary hearing of a plea by several scientists and retired bureaucrats. The bench comprising chief justice of India H S Kapadia and Swatantar Kumar asked the petitioners to first approach the prime minister’s office and the Department of Atomic Energy to get their grievances redressed.  

After years of dilly-dallying and several Supreme Court reminders, the Centre has proposed to bring all essential drugs under price control. But the policy is nothing but hogwash. Its pricing mechanism would make essential medicines out of reach for most people. Public health experts have termed the draft National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy of 2011 a hurried and slipshod job. The pharma industry, too, has expressed reservations.

The Brazilian government has reportedly postponed the Rio +20 earth summit by two weeks. This has been done to avoid clash of date with the diamond jubilee celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II, slated for June 5 next year to mark 60 years of her reign. Around 54 commonwealth world leaders would have had to choose between the two big events. Now the three day earth summit is expected to be held between June 20 and 22, instead of  June 4-6.

The victims of groundwater depletion and environmental pollution in Plachimada village in Kerala’s Palakkad district will have to wait longer for compensation from the Hindustan Coca Cola Beverage Company. This is because the Ministry of Home Affairs first sat on the Plachimada Coca-Cola Victims Relief and Compensation Claims Special Tribunal Bill of 2011for nearly four months and then sent it back to the Kerala government. The bill should have been sent to the president, instead, for her assent.

As protests against the Koodankulam nuclear power plant under construction in Tamil Nadu grows louder, several former bureaucrats and scientists have petitioned the Supreme Court to stay all the proposed nuclear power plants till a safety reassessment is done. The Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB), however,  maintains that Indian nuclear power plants are safe and capable of enduring natural disasters.
 

EIGHT Nobel peace laureates have urged Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper to stop the extraction of oil from tar sands in the country. Oil thus extracted is 25 per cent more polluting than ordinary crude oil, according to the European Commission. Canada is home to the largest reserves of the sands.

Three US scientists who discovered that our Universe's expansion is accelerating have been awarded this year's Nobel prize for physics.

Saul Perlmutter of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ofUniversity of California, Brian P Schmidt of Australian National University, and Adam G Riess of Johns Hopkins University and senior member of Science staff at Space Telescope Science Institute, both in Baltimore, will share the prize money of US $1.5 million.

Thermal power generation in India is set to increase manifold shows an analysis of data from the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF). The country’s total thermal capacity as of April 2011 is 113,000 MW. This capacity is proposed to be increased to 701,820 MW, which is six times the present capacity. The proposed capacity addition is also three times the capacity addition requirement projected for 2032. As India's energy demand grows there seems to be no cheaper alternative to coal-fired thermal plants.

Amidst concerns over nuclear security in the wake of the Fukushima accident in Japan, 151 member states passed an action plan on nuclear safety at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) general conference in Vienna on September 23.

IT IS no mean task to detect tuberculosis. Suspects are subjected to a battery of tests, including sputum and molecular, to ascertain the disease. One of the most expensive and widely used by private pathological labs is the blood test. But the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued advisory asking countries to discontinue the use of blood test to detect tuberculosis as it “misdiagnoses and gives inaccurate results”.

THE World Health Organization has raised alarm over leprosy spreading across India. With the disease infecting about 120,000 people every year, the country is now the biggest contributor to the global leprosy burden, the UN body said in a press release.
 

It’s been more than seven months. Farmer representatives from 12 villages in Nawalgarh are on a sit-in protest outside the sub-divisional magistrate’s office. Their demand: do not give our fertile land to industry.

People in the villages around Ratlam are paying a heavy price for living near the industrial town in Madhya Pradesh. Their groundwater has been polluted by over 23,500 tonnes of hazardous waste dumped at two factory premises and other sites in Ratlam. The quantity of toxic waste lying at the defunct Union Carbide plant in Bhopal city—350 tonnes—is only a fraction of Ratlam’s toxic legacy, but it has been written about much more.

The national vaccine policy draft, submitted by the government in the Delhi High Court recently, strongly favours inclusion of new vaccines in the Universal Immunisation Programme of the country.

Immediately after school, 15-yearold Surendra Kumar rushes to the wheat fields running parallel to the main Chambal canal in Umaidganj village in Rajasthan’s Kota district. He begins his search for a pair of Saras Cranes and their two young ones—the crane family he has been tracking for four years now. After spotting them he takes out a pen and a notebook from his muddy school bag to note down the exact time, date and location.

Once-parched and barren Barmer is turning over a new leaf. About five years ago, Poona Ram, 45, shifted from this desert district of Rajasthan to Gujarat in search of work. He was unable to support his family at a place that could not give him employment. But Poona Ram returned. It was water that brought him back.

PUBLIC health programmes in India are focused on infectious diseases like cholera and malaria. But non-communicable diseases (NCDS) like cancer and heart ailments are known to kill more people. Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad acknowledged rising incidence of NCDS at a two-day World Health Organization (WHO) meeting which concluded in Delhi on March 18. “It’s high time we take stock of them,” he said signalling a shift in government policy.

I found Deep Singh Shekhawat sitting on a pyol (low wall), enclosing the verandah of his home, thoughtfully writing something on a piece of paper. He was surrounded by a few men, all residents of Gothada village in Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu district. As soon as I introduced myself as a “reporter from Delhi”, he asked for two chairs, to seat me and my photographer colleague. Before I could start asking questions, he showed me some documents relating to the state government acquiring agricultural lands of farmers for building three cement plants in Nawalgarh teshil where Gothada is located.

Ajay and Pooja Naik lament the day they took their child for a special vaccination programme. Soon after Yathartha’s birth last year, Ajay learned that a government hospital in Indore in Madhya Pradesh was offering vaccines against many diseases, including polio, H1N1 and hepatitis, for free. What he did not know was, pharma firms were conducting vaccine trials in Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya.

The proposed draft Right to Information (RTI) rules, prepared by the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), Government of India, have invited more criticism than praise. RTI activists say the rules dilute the very spirit of the RTI Act 2005, instead of strengthening it. The new rules aim to amend the existing ones.

It was a cold January morning. As the mist cleared, groups of women could be seen wending their way to the aanganwadi (kindergarten) in Khitwans village in Lalitpur district’s Birdha block. The women were either pregnant or lactating mothers. Pramilla Jha, a counsellor for infant feeding, was waiting for them.

Delhi High Court has granted an interim stay on the suspension of president and secretary general of the Indian Medical Association (IMA). The ethics committee of Medical Council of India (MCI) on November 9 suspended the license of G Samaram, president, and Dharam Prakash, secretary general, for six months. They were charged with violating medical ethics for authorising endorsement deals with PesiCo and Dabur India in 2007.

MALARIA-CARRYING mosquitoes, which kill two million people each year, are evolving faster than expected. This can pose a challenge to eradication programmes currently under way to rid the world of the blood parasite.

The union health ministry is finalising the national antibiotics policy to check indiscriminate use of drugs. The move comes close on the heels of the detection of multi-drug resistant bacteria, dubbed superbug, in foreign patients who underwent treatment in India and Pakistan; it was reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases in August. The ministry has constituted a 13-member panel to give suggestions on the policy and its implementation.

Tiny colourful dots are seen floating in the sky as one approaches Old Delhi around Independence Day. It is the season of kite-flying and kite-fighting. August, this year, was also the month of Ramzan. Distracted by kites, people could forget their hunger pangs in this fasting month.

ALREADY battling with Japanese Encephalitis, eastern Uttar Pradesh is now under the grip of a mystery fever. Till September 16 this year, 277 children died in 12 districts of the region. The physicians and scientists remain clueless about the genesis of the disease.

THREE Indian organisations have successfully developed H1N1 detection kits which give results in an hour and cost between 1,000 and 2,000.

India is these days relying on imports to meet the demand for a plant extract valued for its medicinal properties. Guggal or Commiphora wightii grows in the wild in the arid and semi-arid regions of Pakistan and northern India; its resin, guggal-gum, is prescribed in Ayurveda for heart ailments, obesity and arthritis.

What is the agenda of the newly constituted Council?

It is 9.30 am. The M block main park in Sundarnagri in New Delhi is gearing up for a meeting. Two men carry a microphone and speaker into it. While they fix the gadgets into place, two men enter on a bike, with a bag of rugs intended for seating people on the ground.

SOLAR cell technology has claimed most scientific minds in the sector dedicated to alternative energy sources.

The government introduced the copyright amendment bill in the Rajya Sabha on April 19. The bill gives independent rights to authors, film directors and musicians and makes it difficult for Internet users to access works protected by copyright.

On April 26, the Supreme Court of India rejected the forest clearance the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests granted to French cement company Lafarge to resume mining in Meghalaya. The bench also turned down Attorney General G E Vahan-vati’s plea to let Lafarge mine for the sake of India-Bangladesh bilateral relations. Till the case is heard next in July, the court’s February 5 stay on mining would continue (see ‘SC upholds mining ban on Lafarge’, Down To Earth, April 16-30, 2010).

The United Progressive Alliance government has drafted a showpiece bill to guarantee food for each and every poor person in India. But the government is yet to define who is poor.