-Down to Earth Government sidelines its committee of experts to set up new panel to review India's intellectual property rights policy The politics of protecting intellectual property rights (IPR) is becoming more curiouswith the commerce ministry setting up a think tank to draft a national IPR policy while sidelining a committee of experts it had set up earlier. Annoyed academics who were asked to help formulate the policy in July this year...

-Down to Earth Health experts blame Centre's over-emphasis on women's sterilisation for the Chhattisgarh tragedy THERE WAS nothing right about the sterilisation camp held on November 8 in Chhattisgarh's Takhatpur block of Bilaspur district. An overambitious government doctor-with unsterilised equipment and virtually no manpower-set out to conduct laparoscopic tubectomy on 83 women in an abandoned private hospital. The mass sterilisation led to the death of 13 women and left others critically ill. They were...

-The Indian Express The recent proposal by the National Commission for Women to legalise prostitution has opened up an old debate. It is a misnomer that legalisation would lead to improving the lives of women in prostitution by way of reduced harassment by the police and provision of healthcare facilities. Advocates of legalisation should first examine the experience of countries where prostitution has been legalised. The mere fact that licensing has...

-Business Standard India's mixed record on the Millennium Development Goals is a pointer to policy priorities In 2000, the United Nations held a Millennium Summit, at which the membership adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Spanning a range of development indicators - poverty, gender, health, education and the environment - the MDGs essentially established a set of targets for the global community to achieve by 2015. The framework sets eight broad...

-Business Standard A committee set up to review laws related to protection of environment and forests, headed by former Cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian, has recommended an omnibus green law that will not only subsume existing legislation, but also hold the potential to undo existing judicial pronouncements on environmental issues. The proposed law will also do away with all existing authorities created under the Environment Protection Act, 1986. The panel's report,...