India’s remarkable growth in science funding — notching up annual increases of about 25% over the past five years — seems finally to have been hit by the global economic downturn.

Indian universities are likely to find themselves under a new oversight body, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal announced last week. Physicist Yash Pal led the committee that recommended setting up a six-member National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) to reform higher education.

Science features prominently in the manifestos of the main political parties contesting India's month-long general election, which began on 16 April.

Fresh data confirming accelerated warming over western Himalayas just ahead of the onset of the Indian monsoon year after year could have important implications for the monsoon as well as the Himalayan glaciers, experts say.

An international collaboration to study insects in the Western Ghats mountains in southern India has been unable to get off the ground because of government concerns over biopiracy.

Deal between India and United States spurs investment rush.