-The Hindu One of the most prominent features of India’s middle-class-driven public culture has been an obsession about our GDP growth rate, and a facile equation of that number with a sense of national achievement or impending arrival into affluence. In media headlines, political speeches, and everyday conversations, the GDP growth rate number — whether it is five per cent or eight per cent or whatever — has become a staple...

-The Economic Times Pharmaceutical multinationals have begun using the Right to Information law to launch pre-emptive legal action against local generic players to protect the market of patented drugs and delay the entry of low cost generic medicines in the 60,000-crore domestic drug market. MNCs are using such information to sue generic firms even at a stage when their marketing approval is still pending or during the few months' window between the...

-Economic and Political Weekly A cost-benefi t analysis by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy of the benefits from Aadhaar integration with seven schemes throws up huge benefi ts that are based almost entirely on unrealistic assumptions. Further, the report does not take into account alternative technologies that could achieve the same or similar savings, possibly at lower cost. Reetika Khera (reetika.khera@gmail.com) is at the Institute of Economic Growth on...

-The Economic Times Justice JS Verma says women remain unsafe because of poor governance, not dearth of laws, in an interview with ET. The former Chief Justice of India, who headed the three-member committee to suggest measures for a safer environment for women, had submitted his panel's report in just 29 days, and wants the government to act in the same time: * Do you expect the govt to implement your recommendations...

-The Times of India The Allahabad high court has refused to entertain a PIL seeking a direction to the Centre to rigorously enforce 2-child norm for every couple with suitable incentives to tackle the alarming increase of population in the last three decades. A bench of Acting Chief Justice S K Singh and Justice D K Arora agreed with PIL petitioner Nutan Thakur about the importance of the issue, but accepted additional...