Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh plans to increase the government's R&D spending and create incentives for the private sector to increase spending on science and technology as well.

The Open Source Drug Discovery network's army of volunteers is building a kind of Wikipedia on tuberculosis, which is the leading cause of death in India for those in the prime of life.

In a new report, a blue-ribbon panel decries India's systemic failure to capitalize on basic research findings. The report, released last week by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, offers a stinging indictment of India's scientific frailties, noting that science here is "severely hampered by oppressive bureaucratic practices and inflexible administrative and financial controls." Titled India as a Global Leader in Science, the "vision document" also offers a blueprint for strengthening Indian science—one that will require heaps of money to implement.

In a report, a blue-ribbon panel decries India's systemic failure to capitalize on basic research findings. The report, released last week by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, offers a stinging indictment of India's scientific frailties, noting that science here is "severely hampered by oppressive bureaucratic practices and inflexible administrative and financial controls." Titled India as a Global Leader in Science, the "vision document" also offers a blueprint for strengthening Indian science—one that will require heaps of money to implement.

Monsanto has revealed that a common insect pest has developed resistance to its flagship genetically modified (GM) product in India. The agricultural biotechnology leader says it "detected unusual survival" of pink bollworms that fed on cotton containing the Cry1Ac gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis, which codes for a protein that's toxic to many insect pests.

At a press conference here on 9 February, India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, announced a "moratorium" on commercial release of what would have been India's first genetically modified food crop: varieties of eggplant, called brinjal in India, equipped with a protein from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) that's toxic to insect pests.

The Indian Space Research Organisation's moon mission marks the first venture into "deep space" for an indigenous satellite. India now joins a select club of nations which have achieved this "milestone".

An effort in southern India to raise coastal farmers out of poverty by paying them to cultivate red algae for a food additive has gone awry.

The use of new sampling techniques has cut by half the estimated number of wild tigers in India. A new report from the Indian government puts the number at 1411, compared with 3642 in 2002. Experts say the decline reflects more than just a change in methodology: Poaching, human encroachment and habitat loss take a heavy toll.