-The Hindu In the area of intellectual property, public health and access to medicines, the Narendra Modi government should consider its independence to be of the utmost importance. Strong government leadership as well as flexible intellectual property systems are needed in order to effectively combat drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) and HIV and also antimicrobial resistance and non-communicable diseases. This is true not only for India but also countries which rely on affordable generic...

-The Hindu The Aadhaar Bill opens the door to mass surveillance. This danger needs to be seen in the light of recent attacks on the right to dissent. No other country, and certainly no democratic country, has ever held its own citizens hostage to such a powerful infrastructure of surveillance. The Aadhaar project was sold to the public based on the claim that enrolment was “voluntary”. This basically meant that there was...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: She greets you with a ‘Good morning’, then puts on her gloves, apron and a mask, and immediately gets down to mixing chemicals and cleansers in exact proportions. She is no paramedic. Meet the new-age Indian bai, who now accepts all sorts of assignments, right from cleaning and cooking to babysitting and eldercare, via an app on her smartphone. This professionalisation of your regular bai is a result of...

-TheWire.in Maneka Gandhi should lay off the law banning sex determination tests Maneka Gandhi, a senior minister in the Narendra Modi government has shown how completely at sea she is from her remit for women and child development by suggesting that the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PCPNDT) Act be abolished and that all pregnant women be subjected to a sex determination test on their foetus, the results of which would be...

-The Hindu Business Line Those neither at school nor at work should also be seen as ‘child labour’. The state is responsible for their well-being In order to align with the provisions as contained in The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE, 2009), the Union Cabinet in May, 2015, gave its approval for moving official amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012. This...