-The Hindu Year 2015 will be crucial as shale oil firms begin to feel the pinch of low prices Are falling oil prices good or bad for the global economy? And how do they work for India? Till recently these questions were no-brainers. Cheaper oil is obviously good for the global economy; for an energy-intensive economy such as India's, which also depends on imported oil for meeting four-fifths of its needs, a...

-The Hindu When the National Democratic Alliance government amended the land acquisition Act through an ordinance last week, it promised to set farmers and industry on an amiable path to mutual benefits and development. Land acquisition under the 1894 Act had been marked by violent protests, even police firings at farmers. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (LARR) Act, 2013, is the first law on...

-The Hindu Total fertility rate in 8 States below 2 children per woman Fertility is falling faster than expected in India, and the country is on track to reach replacement levels of fertility as soon as 2020, new official data shows. The 2013 data for the Sample Registration Survey (SRS), conducted by the Registrar General of India, the country's official source of birth and death data, was released on Monday. The SRS shows that...

-Vikalp Once again, India is under pressure from the US to revise its patent law. Anyone familiar with the activities of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) would know that this is nothing new. It has been among the USTR's primary mandates to use trade restrictions in order to persuade (to put it mildly) countries to strengthen their IPR laws. There is, however, a qualitative difference between the actions it has...

-The Hindu In a significant development for the pharmaceutical industry, the Supreme Court has rejected multinational Bayer's appeal to block production and sales of the low cost version of its kidney cancer drug, sorafenib tosylate (branded as Nexavar), by Natco Pharmaceuticals. Hyderabad-based Natco was granted the first and to date only compulsory licence (CL) by the government in 2012 to make and sell a patented drug at a fraction of the...