Lured, used and discarded

THAT day when Darla Dhanalakshmi suffered severe joint pain and numbness in the limbs she knew something was seriously wrong. She had been suffering from the pain since January after she visited a clinic on the outskirts of Hyderabad. There she was asked to pop an unknown pill. The pain got worse over time. On June 17, Dhanalakshmi, along with nine other women and one man from her neighbourhood in Adarsh Nagar slum, was taken to the Guntur district hospital. All of them had the same symptoms. Some of them were extremely weak and had difficulty in walking. The next day, four women from neighbouring Lenin Nagar slum were also hospitalised.

Stay on land allotment for thermal power plant in Sompeta

In a significant shot in the arm for agitating farmers and fishermen, the Andhra Pradesh High Court recently suspended an order issued by the state government alloting 394 hectares (ha) of wetlands for a thermal power plant near Sompeta in Srikakulam district.

Farmers on holiday

Achanta, a small village in Andhra Pradesh, hit the headlines in 1967 with a record rice yield in the kharif or monsoon crop season. It was the time of the Green Revolution. N Subba Rao, a farmer from the village, harvested three tonnes of paddy from just one kilogramme of seeds. Other farmers followed suit and the village became a model for intensified rice farming.

Andhra in a fix over quota

IT SEEMS elections for local bodies in Andhra Pradesh will not be held until contentions over reservation quotas are resolved. A day after the State Election Commission (SEC) announced holding panchayat polls by the second week of July, a division bench of Andhra Pradesh High Court stayed the elections. It also suspended a government order issued on June 6 to maintain the status quo of 60.5 per cent reservation for backward communities during panchayat polls this year.  

Acquisition made easy

New land acquisition bill won’t bring relief to tribals

No one liable for trial mishap

What if a participant dies during a clinical trial? ICMR guidelines clearly mention that a participant must be insured for injuries and deaths. They bind ethics committees to review insurance documents before giving approval for the trial. Contract Research Organisations (CROs) and pharmaceutical companies say they ensure that participants are compensated in case of adverse events. Ground reality, however, is different.

Mining halted

DISTRICT collector of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh cancelled the lease to mine China clay in the area on May 16. The move was in response to the sustained protests by tribal residents, who say land was allotted to outsiders without their consent.

Letters

Bring back trams

Andhra to promote chemical free cultivation

Taking note of the Non Pesticide Management (NPM) technique, the Andhra Pradesh government issued an order on May 16 that the agriculture department will work in collusion with the rural development department to reduce the cost of cultivation and move towards pesticide-free cultivation in the state.

Movement for worse

Bhubaneswar Bindhani has not heard of a UNDP Human Development Report Paper, ‘Migration and Human Development’. It is quite likely the authors of the 2009 report did not take note of the fortunes of this resident of Nuagaon village in Odisha’s Nuapada district when they wrote, “migration fosters development of the migrant people.” They also perhaps did not take note of many other people from Odisha’s western districts who migrate every year to work in sub-human conditions at brick kilns and construction sites in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.