-Business Standard Intellectual property policy should focus on implementation A preliminary draft of a new intellectual property rights policy for India has been the occasion for much discussion. Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman even felt it necessary to assert on Twitter that the proposed revamp is not meant to appease the United States, given that this remains a major outstanding irritant in relations between the two countries. The government has argued that the...

-The Indian Express "If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one." So said Fritz Machlup, a wise American economist several decades ago. His words remain as true now as they were then. For, the patent system is one of the most faulty legal regimes that one could possibly have conceived. It purports...

-The Tribune There has been a big political rush to reform Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) or agricultural markets. It is now known that most of the problems of the farm sector start and end with agricultural markets in some way or the other. The Model APMC Act 2003 provided a road map for the states to amend their APMC Acts in order to provide choice of channels to farmer for sale...

-The Hindu While liberalisation's backers are not squeamish in admitting that democracy is an impediment to the free market economic model, farmers who are dispossessed of land argue that they are undercompensated and that the profit of private companies is not a public purpose Since it was passed by Parliament in September 2013, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR) has been criticised from...

-Economic and Political Weekly   A "high-level" committee makes half-baked recommendations which will rollback the PDS. A ccording to media reports, former Union Minister for Food Shanta Kumar recently disowned the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He explained, without blinking, that the BJP had just pretended to support the Act when it was being discussed in Parliament, for fear of the possible electoral consequences of...