-The Telegraph New Delhi: Health and patients' rights groups have called on the government to resist American pressure that they claimed was aimed at weakening safeguards in India's patent laws that allow drug companies to sell inexpensive generic medicine. Health activists representing patients' rights said they were concerned that bilateral talks on intellectual property rights, to feature during US President Barack Obama's visit to India beginning this weekend, may be rigged against...

-Business Standard Former rural development minister Jairam Ramesh tells Sanjeeb Mukherjee that the Ordinance to amend the land acquisition Act (2013) opens the door for forcible acquisition and undermines the spirit and the substance of the legislation. Edited excerpts: * An oft-repeated argument given by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to justify bringing an Ordinance to amend the land acquisition Act (2013) passed by your government is that many Congress-ruled states...

-Frontline SHUBHANKAR DAM, Assistant Professor of Law at Singapore Management University School of Law, is the author of Presidential Legislation in India: The Law and Practice of Ordinances (Cambridge University Press, 2014), which has received wide acclaim among scholars of constitutional law. Against the backdrop of his insightful critique on the necessity of ordinances in a democracy, Professor Dam discusses in this interview the recent controversy triggered by the Bharatiya Janata...

-The Hindu In the name of economic reforms and development, the government has taken a significant step backward in India's march to land justice. The pushing through of the Land Act ordinance violates all democratic norms On Monday, the Bharatiya Janata Party government cleared the proposed ordinance to amend the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act 2013. This amendment, insofar as has been made known...

-The Hindu Business Line The rural job guarantee scheme is threatened by the undermining of its driving force, demand-driven work Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) suffering a midlife crisis or are we staring at its death? From a budget of ₹401 billion in 2010-11, it has plummeted to ₹330 billion in 2013-14. Given the much higher wages currently offered to workers, it has taken a serious hit. The...