Credits controversy

FOR almost an year now, the Bombay-based Cancer Research Institute (CRI) and Delhi's National Institute of Immunology (NII) have been squabbling over credit for the development of an anti-leprosy vaccine.

Powering the elite

The New Delhi Municipal Committee (ndmc) proposes to set up its own gas-based power plant and water treatment plant at a cost of Rs 100 crore to ensure uninterrupted supply of electricity and water to the 4,200 hectare vvip area in the capital that come under its jurisdiction.

Garlic wards off TB

Garlic is effective in treating tuberculosis, especially the kind which is resistant to antibiotics, claim scientists P Ratnakar, D Srilatha and P S Murthy of the University College of Medical Sciences and the Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital in Delhi.

Fear strikes the heart

Covert transfer

ONCE the parity in the prices of kerosene and high speed diesel oil (HSDO) ceased in 1978-79 and HSDO prices soared to nearly 3 times that of kerosene in 1992-93, there has been a sharp increase in the demand for kerosene in the blackmarket. While the household energy consumption grew at a rate of an estimated 3 to 4 per cent per annum, the sale of kerosene inordinately grew at 6.5 per cent, signalling that a good bit was going somewhere else.

No sweat over this shirt

How often have you sat in an overcrowded bus on a summer day, irritated by the shirt sticking to your body, wet with sweat? Now, thanks to a new absorbent synthetic fibre, shirts may no longer adhere to the skin, and you may breathe free.

Fuelling a crisis

KEROSENE is the cooking flame in the kitchen for a large part of Delhi's households. This most basic of liquid fuels has for years been provided by the government's public distribution system (PDS), a classically corrupt and decentralised system, to people who usually turn a blind eye to the bent "fair price" shopowners siphoning off to the blackmarket just about everything -- except precious kerosene.

Ringing in the trams

After years of harping on the Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) -- a Gordian tangle of subways, ring railway and surface transport -- as the best option for an increasingly congested Delhi, the Union ministry of surface transport (MST) has gone back in time for a solution: it is thinking of ringing in the trams, almost three-quarters of a century after they were taken off the roads to ease traffic flow in the first place.

No to afforestation

ON JULY 23, Delhi's development minister Sahib Singh Verma kicked off the state government's afforestation drive from Jaunapur village in Mehrauli block. However, indignant at being forced out of the area and suddenly losing their traditional rights over the land, the villagers tried to block the minister's path, leading to lathi charges and arrests.

Grabbing land for green cover

"Green cover" -- a near-generic, near-pacifist environmental term today -- was coined at a time of bitter war, by Allied troops hiding from Japanese bombing runs in Malaya's forests in World War II. In the next great war, the Vietnam war, ironically, green cover was home to the Vietcong and a threat to the American troops, who Agent Orange-d the country. Thereafter, the progress of development has seen to the defoliation of the world's land to such an extent that war has come into something so benign as environmentalism.