-Down to Earth Tough new conditions emerge in the compromise deal to ease WTO intellectual property barriers to production of COVID-19 medical tools We are back to square one. Back to the beginning after 18 months of a wearying, tortuous series of negotiations that carried on while millions of lives hung in the balance — and still do. The waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights on medicines, vaccines and diagnostics to fight the...

-PTI/ Newsclick.in The Meghalaya government has recently submitted the action taken report to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) after the latter registered a case over the high number of maternal and newborn deaths in the state during the pandemic. Shillong: As many as 877 newborn babies and 61 mothers have died as pregnant women refused to get admitted to hospitals for institutional delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic due to fears of...

-Newsclick.in VENKATESH NAYAK analyses data from the Central Information Commission’s Annual Report for 2021-21 to demonstrate the frequency of rejecting RTI applications under various exemption clauses of the RTI Act used by different central public authorities and Union Territories, comparing the rejections numbers with the same for the previous year. WITH a 2.95 per cent dip in the number of applications under the Right to Information [RTI] Act filed across central public...

-Newsclick.in Among 179 countries, India ranked 93 in the Liberal Democracy Index, and 100 in the Electoral Democracy Index, says V-Dem’s report. New Delhi: India has figured in the top 10 autocratising countries of the world along with El Salvador, Turkey and Hungary, and projections indicate that there will be a further decline in democracy in the country, according to a recent report released by the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute (Varieties of Democracy...

-The Hindu Activists participating in jawabdehi dharna in Rajasthan have said their protest will continue until the statute is enacted JAIPUR: Information and livelihood rights activists in Rajasthan have shifted their emphasis from enactment of a transparency and social accountability law to an early introduction of the Bill on the subject, following a budgetary announcement in the State Assembly. The ruling Congress had, in its manifesto for the 2018 Assembly election, promised to...