-Down to Earth US actions jeopardise India's pro-poor patent laws that promote generic drugs production, says online global petition More than 75,000 people have requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to succumb to US pressure on Intellectual Property Rights (IP). With trade and intellectual property rights featuring prominently in the agenda of US president Barak Obama's India visit, civil society groups have expressed concern that talks on these issues are designed to make...

-Down to Earth The situation of India's farmers has only become grimmer in the past decade, according to the latest National Sample Survey Office report The lot of the embattled Indian farmer only keeps on getting worse with the passage of time. In the last 10 years, the voluminous debt of Indian agricultural households has increased almost four-fold whereas their undersized monthly income from cultivation has increased three-fold. Even the number of...

-The Hindu Given industry concerns and the desire to accelerate industrialisation, the government could have reopened the debate on the land act. Instead, it has wholly accepted one perception of the conflict, and sought to undo the compromise embodied in the 2013 Act without a review This article will not go into the question of the propriety of the ordinance route to legislation in this case, but will try to present a...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Congress chief Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday accused the Modi government of surreptitiously restoring a century-old British law on land acquisition even as the party brainstormed on "weakening" of UPA's "aam aadmi" policies, firmly adopting a left-of-centre approach to take on BJP. Congress appears set to launch an agitation against the NDA government's policies of coal mine auctions, liberalized land acquisition, Forest Rights Act and a restructured...

-The Hindu Alleviating poverty in India requires not only cash transfers but also other enabling changes Advocates of unconditional cash transfers claim that they can be both emancipatory and transformative. They argue that people are quite capable of making rational decisions. And that this kind of basic income support can improve their lives. I have no quarrel with the claim that we must trust the poor. Such suspicion is part of an elite...