Policy on climate change should highlight economic and security cost of missed targets

India is doing poorly on the energy front in a way which is not commonly realised. The popular narrative is that it is misleading to look at the energy consumption and emissions of a country without taking into consideration its size (population) and per capita incomes. Hence India may be one of the largest polluters in the world but in terms of per capita energy consumption, income and emissions, it is way down in the global league table.

Players with integration between clinical work and data are going to dominate the post-BPO scene

Regulators round the world have become increasingly concerned about pharmacovigilance, the post-marketing surveillance of a drug for its entire life. Quintiles is offering this service to customers across the globe. About 500 of Quintiles’s staff in India are engaged in this work; global staff in the same operation are also led from India. Work in India has grown in the last four-five years.

In the past two years, clinical trials in India have come increasingly under public scrutiny. As a result, clinical research organisations (CROs), companies that conduct clinical trials for drug makers, are somewhat under pressure.

However, leading CROs in the country, such as Quintiles, are riding on the hope that they will be able to redeem the opportunities in the sector once the regulatory system is set right. As that happens, the threat to this area, where India till recently had a lead over China, shall be overcome, and things will be back to normal.

Bangalore, the nation’s information technology capital, has entered the second harrowing week of being in threat of drowning in its own garbage because the landfills serving it cannot be used. In the process, the city’s municipal commissioner is being transferred.

The city’s experience offers a lesson to all major urban centres in the country, which will come to grief if they do not follow the right policies. On the other hand, those that have done so like Kanpur and Pune have become role models.

In the age of recycling, ragpickers perform a socially highly useful function. But the middle class simply wants them banished
Russel Street, off Park Street, is among the poshest addresses anyone in Kolkata can think of.

Since 70-80%of the urban India that is going to be there is yet to be built, with good sense it can be built right

Vouchers have some but not all the answers to current ills

As Copenhagen has got going amidst more hope than was there initially, attention must shift to the massive task that lies beyond.

Subir Roy / New Delhi December 05, 2009, 0:36 IST

Kolkata

Kolkata