India is coming under increasing pressure from the U.S. and the European Union for the strict patentability criteria it applies for medicines. AS was only to be expected, the two landmark decisions made by the Indian patent office in recent times concerning pharmaceutical patent cases have not gone down well with the multinational drug industry. First, there was the rejection in 2006 of the patent application by the Swiss multinational...

Court settles the class issue, but the real challenges of RTE have to be met The debate over the Right to Education is beginning to display characteristic symptoms of Indian debates. Elites are inventing specious arguments to condone the economic apartheid in the current system. But India’s self-appointed anti-elites are often even more elitist. They are more fixated on taking down elites a peg or two rather than intelligently fixing real...

The Supreme Court on Friday pulled up the Kerala government for enacting legislation to circumvent its or High Court judgments. Kerala was the only State where it was telling citizens not to obey the law, said a Bench of Justices D.K. Jain and Anil R. Dave. Hearing an appeal against an interim order of the Kerala High Court staying a provision of the Kerala Public Ways (Restriction of Assemblies and Processions)...

HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...

-The Hindu The Rajasthan Assembly on Thursday passed a significant anti-corruption legislation which would facilitate the Government to confiscate and attach any disproportionate property amassed by the corrupt public servants. The Rajasthan Special Courts Act, 2012 passed in the Assembly by a voice vote is modelled after existing legislations in the States of Bihar and Orissa. The legislation brings everyone who draws salary from the Government, including the Chief Minister, under its...