-The Hindu Business Line Govt wants to keep issues of national importance outside purview of the law New Delhi: Is the Centre diluting the whistleblower protection law by excluding certain issues of national importance from its purview? It appears so, going by the latest Amendment Bill, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Monday. A likely effect of the new Bill is that whistleblowers seeking to raise issues of national importance, including those...

-Economic and Political Weekly Ten years on, the progressive provisions of the amended Indian Patents Act are being watered down. Ten years have passed since the Indian Patents Act, 1970 was amended in 2005 to bring the country’s laws in line with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The most important of the 2005 amendments was the introduction of product patents for 20 years, including for pharmaceutical products,...

-The Telegraph Lucknow: The Akhilesh Yadav government today suspended three revenue officers after some rain-hit farmers were handed compensation cheques of Rs 75 and Rs 100, and ordered a probe into how such a pittance was paid. News channels showed the farmers in Faizabad and Badaun districts of Uttar Pradesh waving cheques of Rs 100, Rs 75 and even Rs 69. These farmers had lost their crops in last month's unseasonal rain...

-The Asian Age The much-quoted sentence, "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics", was attributed to the 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli by American author Mark Twain. Although researchers could never find such a statement in any written work of Disraeli, the sentence gained universal popularity to signify how economists and other number-crunchers use the "persuasive power" of figures to make a political point or...

-Tribune India Policy shift towards market-oriented management will hit marginal farmers hard There is unfolding of the policy of the NDA government towards agriculture. Contrary to election speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government has kept quiet about the Swaminathan Commission report about fixing the MSP of agricultural commodities at cost plus 50 per cent. At the same time, the government has given indication towards reduced FCI operations. It has been...