-The Economic Times Pharmaceutical multinationals have begun using the Right to Information law to launch pre-emptive legal action against local generic players to protect the market of patented drugs and delay the entry of low cost generic medicines in the 60,000-crore domestic drug market. MNCs are using such information to sue generic firms even at a stage when their marketing approval is still pending or during the few months' window between the...

-The Indian Express A day after The Indian Express reported that video clips showed police destroying private property and looting shops in the north Maharashtra town of Dhule during violence earlier this month, Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said there were “some communal elements” in the state police too and this needed to be handled with great sensitivity. “I have seen the clips that you have written about. Unfortunately, there are some communal...

-The Hindu One of the most prominent features of India’s middle-class-driven public culture has been an obsession about our GDP growth rate, and a facile equation of that number with a sense of national achievement or impending arrival into affluence. In media headlines, political speeches, and everyday conversations, the GDP growth rate number — whether it is five per cent or eight per cent or whatever — has become a staple...

-The Economic Times Justice JS Verma says women remain unsafe because of poor governance, not dearth of laws, in an interview with ET. The former Chief Justice of India, who headed the three-member committee to suggest measures for a safer environment for women, had submitted his panel's report in just 29 days, and wants the government to act in the same time: * Do you expect the govt to implement your recommendations...

-The Hindu Although it has left some crucial questions unanswered, the Verma Committee report is a big step forward in the struggle for women’s rights The UPA government has perhaps got more than what it bargained for from the committee it set up, headed by the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Justice J.S. Verma, in the wake of the public outrage following the horrific Delhi gang rape. The government had...