-Vikalp Once again, India is under pressure from the US to revise its patent law. Anyone familiar with the activities of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) would know that this is nothing new. It has been among the USTR's primary mandates to use trade restrictions in order to persuade (to put it mildly) countries to strengthen their IPR laws. There is, however, a qualitative difference between the actions it has...
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Only 40 per cent of rural households dependent on farming as main income source: NSSO -Harish Damodaran
-The Indian Express Hardly 58 per cent of rural households in India are engaged in farming activity, which, in turn, contributes not even 60 per cent to their average total monthly incomes. These are the findings of the latest countrywide "Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households" conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) for the 2012-13 crop year from July to June. They refute a common perception regarding agriculture - how it...
More »MGNREGA in Andhra Pradesh's Tribal Areas -Diego Maiorano and Chakradhar Buddha
-Economic and Political Weekly India's scheduled tribes are among the most deprived socio-economic groups and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme has great potential in tribal areas. While the Andhra Pradesh government has made an effort to ensure implementation of the scheme in the scheduled areas, the gap between administrative orders and the grass-roots level is wide. This article lists measures that could radically improve implementation of the scheme...
More »‘More victims reporting rape, many assaulted repeatedly’ -Pritha Chatterjee
-The Indian Express In 2001-05, 50 sexual assault cases were reported at the Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital - the nodal government hospital that conducts medical examination of such victims from East and North East Delhi. In June 2010-December 2013, the number of cases jumped to 221 - an over fourfold increase. The number of victims who were assaulted more than once also showed a significant increase - from 14 per cent...
More »Learning from the Ernakulam experiment -S Krishna Kumar
-The Hindu Other States in India can study how the family planning programme has worked in Kerala and incorporate those features in their own programmes The recent tragedy of several women losing their lives in the state-sponsored tubectomy camp in Takhatpur, Chhattisgarh, has caused severe damage to the national family planning programme. This, however, is not an invalidation of the importance of sterilisation as an integral part of the programme, but only...
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