-The Indian Express How an affable, erudite professor influenced everyone around him. The first time I met Shamnad Basheer was at a patent conference in Mumbai in 2007. He was wearing a light-blue linen suit (always ahead of the curve, be it law or fashion), looking more a GQ model than a professor who had helped organise a first-of-its-kind patent conference in India. There was also an exhibition moot court to...

-TheWire.in Basheer was the founder and managing trustee of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access or IDIA, a body which aims at bringing legal awareness to the underprivileged. Legal scholar, intellectual property rights activist and public interest litigator Shamnad Basheer passed away on Thursday, in an accident at Chikkamagaluru in Karnataka, reports say. He was 43. Basheer was the founder and managing trustee of Increasing Diversity by Increasing Access or IDIA, a body which...

-The Times of India Are a majority of those practising allopathy in India quacks? The government said no, it now says yes. A 2016 WHO report on the health workforce in India had shocked everybody by stating that 57.3% of those practising allopathic medicine did not have any medical qualification. Then Union health minister JP Nadda had rubbished the report as “erroneous” in January 2018 while responding to a question in...

-TheWire.in An independent analysis of 12 Mohalla clinics in Delhi to verify the claims of the government and opposition. Delhi’s Mohalla Clinics created quite a stir when the first one was opened in Peeragarhi in 2015. During the Aam Aadmi Party’s first year in office, the clinics were started to take diagnostics and treatment of simple ailments to people’s doorstep and reduce the footfall in tertiary care hospitals. Mohalla Clinics have been...

-The Indian Express Dr Manoj Thaguria said, “A lot of patients revisit the dispensaries, hence the high number of beneficiaries. Some also manage to get a second course of prescribed medicines on the same day." Jaipur: In his budget address earlier this week, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot increased the number of free medicines from 608 to 712 and free tests from 70 to 90, under the Chief Minister’s Free medicine...