Ashok Gehlot's Budget speech lays emphasis on social welfare measures Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's Budget speech in the Rajasthan Assembly here on Wednesday laid emphasis on “positive results” of the State Government's work during the previous year for development of various sectors, and made a number of announcements for the welfare of different sections of society. In a significant declaration, Mr. Gehlot said a State-level Advisory Council would be constituted shortly in...

In yet another step towards modernising India's postal services, Union Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal on Wednesday launched ‘e-post office,' the e-commerce portal of India Post that will provide various postal services online. ‘Transact anytime' “Earlier, consumers used to go to service providers but now services providers are going to consumers… this is the future of the 21st century. The portal will enable customers to transact postal business anytime and...

A government proposal seeking to police blogs has come in for severe criticism from legal experts and outraged the online community. The draft rules, drawn up by the government under the Information Technology Amendment Act, 2008, deal with due diligence to be observed by an intermediary. Under the Act, an 'intermediary' is defined as any entity which on behalf of another receives, stores or transmits any electronic record. Hence, telecom networks,...

India faces the challenge of inappropriate use of antibiotics while Bharat copes with poor access to treatment, resulting in a policy conundrum and inaction. India was recently in the news for the wrong reasons. The serious threat posed by the newly discovered microbe, NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo--lactamase-1), resistant to many antibiotics, triggered alarm and panic. Predictions that the country will not meet the millennium development goal for child mortality caused dismay....

Draft rules proposed by the Indian government for intermediaries such as telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and blogging sites could in effect aid censorship, according to experts. Under the draft rules, intermediaries will have to notify users of their services not to use, display, upload, publish, share or store a variety of content, for which the definition is very vague, and liable to misuse. Content that is prohibited under these guidelines ranges...