Two years after they were implemented in rest of India   Nearly two years after the legislation was implemented in the rest of the country on April 1, 2010, the West Bengal Government has now framed rules for implementing the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. In keeping with the provisions of the Act, the age of admissions to Class I across the State has been raised from the...

The proposed amendments to marriage laws lack the detail to guarantee women their full due   The cabinet’s decision to clear a bill providing for amendment to marriage laws has evoked mixed reactions within women’s organisations. While the introduction of the notion of matrimonial property within Indian family laws is a welcome move, the manner in which it is being done seems hasty and without due consideration of its implementability. There is...

Punctuality audit ordered by the Chief Secretary of the Delhi government last year opened the Pandora’s Box on poor attendance records of government officials. Documents obtained under an RTI filed by Pratidhi show that nodal departments had large numbers of their staff members missing, on most surprise checks. Chief secretary P K Tripathi had ordered the audit last June after writing to heads of all departments that they must conduct at...

India's decision this month to produce Germany-based multinational Bayer's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, in the first use of "compulsory licensing" in South Asia, will save lives but also raises intricate questions. Under the compulsory licensing process, a government can under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules bypass a patent owner's rights after three years and order the manufacture and sale of life-saving medicines at much cheaper cost than by obtaining the medicine from...

-Reuters India's move to strip German drugmaker Bayer of its exclusive rights to a cancer drug has set a precedent that could extend to other treatments, including modern HIV/AIDS drugs, in a major blow to global pharmaceutical firms, experts say.  On Monday, the Indian Patent Office effectively ended Bayer's monopoly for its Nexavar drug and issued its first-ever compulsory license allowing local generic maker Natco Pharma to make and sell the drug...