Drug trials represent a new colonialism?

Western pharmaceutical companies have seized on India over the past five years as a testing ground for drugs – making the most of a huge population and loose regulations which help dramatically cut research costs for lucrative products to be sold in the West. The relationship is so exploitative that some believe it represents a new colonialism.
Can we do something for mutual benefit or stop this practice?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/without-consent-how-drugs-companies-exploit-indian-guinea-pigs-6261919.html?mid=52

Barefoot college of innovation?

Can be take lessons and start barefoot colleges all over India? The link..


http://www.ted.com/talks/bunker_roy.html

Thanks,

What development and high GDP means to the poor in India?

The problem with counting the poor is the target given to each state, that you would have these many poors only. How can they define poors themselves without doing an actual survey? This is farce and totally unjustified. States are redefining povery lines, so a poor in one state may not be a poor in another, why this discrimination?

Below is how the Outlook understand this in analytical manner;

The pitfalls of “BPL targeting” have become increasingly clear in recent years. First, there is no reliable way of identifying poor households, and the exclusion errors are enormous: at least three national surveys indicate that, around 2004-05, about half of all poor households in rural India did not have a “BPL card”. Second, India’s poverty line is abysmally low, so that even if all the BPL cards were correctly and infallibly allocated to poor households, large numbers of people who are in dire need of social support would remain excluded from the system. In 2009-10, for instance, the official poverty line in Delhi was around Rs 30 per person per day. This is just about enough to buy one kilogram of rice and a one-way bus ticket that would take you three stops down the road. Third, BPL targeting is extremely divisive, and undermines the unity and strength of public demand for functional social services, making a collaborative right into a divisive privilege......
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?278843

Innovations for poor: manual scavenging- Can we do something? Any Ideas ...

Innovations for poor: manual scavenging- Can we do something? Any Ideas ...: 'One of the darkest blots on our development process is the fact that even after 64 years of independence, we still have the heinous practic...

manual scavenging- Can we do something? Any Ideas !

'One of the darkest blots on our development process is the fact that even after 64 years of independence, we still have the heinous practice of manual scavenging. Today, I would like you to pledge that this scourge will be eliminated from every corner of our country in the next six months.'

Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh's speech on 16^th June, 2011.....

But, what is the reality?

http://www.alrc.net/doc/mainfile.php/hrc9/515/

http://www.altlawforum.org/labour/research-and-publications/Aalur%20Tq%20report%20-1.doc/view?searchterm=manual scavenging workers

http://www.altlawforum.org/labour/research-and-publications/Aalur%20Tq%20report%20-1.doc/view?searchterm=manual scavenging workers