-Economic and Political Weekly The Indian weaver is dismissed in high places as an embarrassing anachronism, despite demand for his or her skills and products. In the new millennium, globalisation and a mindless acquiescence to imported notions of a good life threaten to take over, even as the West looks East for better concepts of sustainable living. Analysing today's crisis in the handloom sector, plagued by low-cost imitations from power looms,...

-Economic and Political Weekly A number of state agencies and non-governmental organisations have come forward to facilitate farmers/breeders to register their crop varieties and obtain plant variety certifi cates. But can these agencies bring forth a change in the mindset of the small farmers and seed savers' groups who view the current intellectual property regime with scepticism and continue to keep away from it? Shalini Bhutani (shalinibhutani@hotmail.com) is a legal researcher and...

-The Tribune The Supreme Court may take time to decide upon existence or non-existence of the “right to privacy”. The Aadhaar project should not be scrapped.It should be implemented with safeguards to prevent the misuse of biometric data. The tussle over right to privacy is is still on in the Supreme Court of India. While the government has already completed 75 per cent of its work, debate on the existence of one...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday stressed the need for a new law to regulate social media to curb malicious and defamatory messages circulated online. Expressing concern over misuse of social media and internet, particularly after the controversial section 66A of the Information Technology Act was scrapped by the Supreme Court, a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant said Parliament should bring a new...

-Tehelka The decision was taken four days after the music video ‘Kodaikanal Won’t’ went viral transcending all boundaries and created huge outrage against company’s disregard for the lives of it’s former employees and environment. Finally, the corporate giant Hindustan Uniliver yielded before the power of the common man and decided to clean up mercury contaminated soil in the premises of its closed thermometer factory in Kodaikanal. The decision was taken four days...