-The Hindu Law is merely an instrumentality of justice, to deliver it remains in the hands of those vested with the responsibility of implementing them - the police, the courts and the lawyers. Thanks to the documentary India's Daughter by British film-maker Leslee Udwin, the subject of sexual violence and attitudes towards women in India is back in the national headlines. Over two years ago, when the rape of a 23-year-old paramedical...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Finance minister Arun Jaitley today promised gifts for children, women, patients and the poor but slashed his government's funding across the social sectors. Budget outlays for education, health, rural development, social justice and women and children have fallen sharply or remain close to the outlays these sectors had received last year. The allocation for children under the women and child development ministry witnessed the sharpest fall from last...

-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...

-Vikalp Once again, India is under pressure from the US to revise its patent law. Anyone familiar with the activities of the United States Trade Representatives (USTR) would know that this is nothing new. It has been among the USTR's primary mandates to use trade restrictions in order to persuade (to put it mildly) countries to strengthen their IPR laws. There is, however, a qualitative difference between the actions it has...

-The Hindu Attempt to commit suicide should stay on the statute book because suicide comes in conflict with the monopolistic power of the state to take away life You choose your country, you choose your spouse, you choose your profession, you choose your political masters, and you choose where you want to live and how. Die you must. But how to die and when: should that be a matter of choice as...