-The Telegraph Guwahati: Apart from Tripura and Sikkim, enrolment for Aadhaar cards remains very low in the northeastern states, with Assam at the bottom of the list. According to figures available with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which handles the Aadhaar project, as on November 30, 2014, the percentage of enrolment against the total population was abysmally low in Assam - 0.3 per cent. The trend is not much better in...

-Economic and Political Weekly The National Democratic Alliance government has constituted the IPR Think Tank which, among other things, is to draft the National Intellectual Property Rights Policy. India may not have a policy per se but it has a strong legislation on IPRs, a functioning patents office and mechanisms to grant patents as well as protect consumer interests. The Think Tank has other issues it needs to address, but is...

-Livemint Finance minister Arun Jaitley says govt is considering making the use of Aadhaar mandatory for real estate transactions New Delhi/Bengaluru: In a move aimed at curbing the use of black money in property deals, the government is considering linking real estate transactions with Aadhaar, the unique identity number. If implemented, the move could provide a trail of all real estate transactions by an individual. It could also potentially solve the problem...

-The Hindu The imperatives of governance have a tendency to make political parties think differently once they are in power and revisit earlier misgivings. Nothing illustrates this better than the Narendra Modi government's decision to go ahead with the ‘Aadhaar' scheme aimed at giving unique identification numbers to residents. The Bharatiya Janata Party had on some occasions in the past voiced its reservations about the viability and desirability of the...

-The Business Standard   NC Saxena, a former member of the National Advisory Council believes that the regulatory regime in the states continues to be oppressive. In an e-mailed interview with Aditi Phadnis, Saxena says that the fundamental problem in India is the low tax-GDP ratio and neither the last government nor the current one seems interested in increasing revenues. Edited excerpts: * The new government appears to be watering down a lot...