-The Indian Express India is no insecure dictatorship junking international obligations for cheap populism. The highest court of the world's largest democracy has made a nuanced distinction between real innovation and marketing gimmickry. Yet, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis's response to the recent Supreme Court verdict in Novartis vs Union of India has been imperial in tone. The judgment "discourages innovative drug discovery", it claimed. It accused Indian law of lagging...

-PTI Calling Amartya Sen the "greatest humanist" and a "great thinker", French President Francois Hollande today bestowed his country's highest decoration on the Nobel Prize-winning celebrated economist for his contributions to economics and philosophy. Conferring 'Commandeur de la Legion d'Honneur' (Legion of Honour) after delivering the Madhavrao Scindia Memorial Lecture here, Hollande lavished praise on Sen and quoted extensively from his works that speak about problems faced by the poorest sections of...

-The Telegraph Even reformed capitalism cannot give equal opportunity There is a view that the real problem with capitalism is that there is no equality of opportunity under this system. Your entire life gets determined by which class you happen to get born into. If the effect of this ‘happenstance’ could somehow be eliminated, so that everyone enjoyed equality of opportunity, then even though income and wealth inequalities continued to remain...

We are providing below the revised version of the above mentioned article (in pdf), which was originally published in Outlook, 14 November, 2011 Is India doing marvellously well, or is it failing terribly? Depending on whom you speak to, you could pick up either of those answers with some frequency. One story, very popular among a minority – but a large enough group - of Indians who are doing very well...

-Outlook Its ploy of Aadhar-hinged cash transfer may have won the Congress political points, but will it really be a game-changer?   State-Wise     40% of the 22 crore Aadhar numbers are in Andhra Pradesh (4.7 crore) and Maharashtra (4 crore)     20% is what the two politically sensitive, Congress-ruled states account for of the 51 districts where DCT will be rolled out     55 lakh Aadhar numbers in TMC-run West Bengal. BJP-ruled Gujarat (57...