-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre plans to change the criteria for selecting the beneficiaries of its rural housing scheme for the poor, dropping the earlier poverty-list-based method for one that uses a points system based on the ongoing caste census. The government believes the proposed reform will achieve better targeting by including deserving families left out of the below-poverty-line (BPL) list, but critics feel it would leave a huge number of...

-The Hindu A study shows that Indians are not immune to health consequences of smoking and that smokers have a higher death rate than non-smokers. Recently, a parliamentary committee declined to extend the size of health warnings on cigarette packets due to lack of independent evidence on the health impacts of smoking on the Indian population. A longitudinal study conducted by the National Council of Applied Economics (NCAER) and University of Maryland shows that in...

-The Times of India Marriage at a later age than in the past is a reality, but teenage brides are by no means as uncommon as we might think, with 41.3% of all girls aged 19 in India having married, according to just-released data from the 2011 census. Of over 10 million girls of this age at the time of the census, more than 4.1 million were married or already divorced,...

-Economic and Political Weekly Ten years on, the progressive provisions of the amended Indian Patents Act are being watered down. Ten years have passed since the Indian Patents Act, 1970 was amended in 2005 to bring the country’s laws in line with the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The most important of the 2005 amendments was the introduction of product patents for 20 years, including for pharmaceutical products,...

-The Hindu The Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill 2015 contains no provisions for consent from tribals for mining operations, but strengthens the rights of private sector mining companies Even as countrywide protests against the land ordinance gain momentum, Adivasi communities living in mineral-rich areas are apprehensive of what awaits them as the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill 2015 (MMDRA) has received presidential assent and the government has drafted Rules...