Diluting women's share in marital property in the event of divorce, the government has sought to restrict the provision for `immoveable property' to residential assets, a move opposed by women's Rights activists. The marriage amendment bill seeks to amend the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, and the Special Marriage Act, 1954, legislating a women's right to marital property acquired during the subsistence of marriage. The amendment cleared by the Union Cabinet recently...

As cartoons, like all other images, are constantly subject to fresh interpretation, there is a need to set boundaries within which dissent must be tolerated; or else we run the risk of damaging the task of knowledge building Like many books, works of art, and articles that have been summarily withdrawn from public circulation, for different political reasons, and due to public pressure, the controversial 1949 cartoon by Shankar has been...

-The Times of India Encouraged by usage of the provisions of the Right to Information Act, the government has decided to set up a state-of-the-art call centre and an interactive website to facilitate easy exchange of information related to the transparency law to citizens. The project was envisaged after taking insights from a government study which highlighted inconvenience faced by citizens in exercising their Rights to information. According to a department of personnel...

Health activists and cancer patients in the US have pounced on Swiss drug multinational Novartis for the high price of its famous, multi-billion dollar anti-cancer drug Glivec, a development which challenges pharma MNCs' claims of cheap access and affordability for patented drugs. Such protests, which began first in Europe, and have now spread to the US, could make it more difficult for pharma MNCs in developing countries to convince sceptical governments...

Veteran agricultural scientist and alumnus of Harvard and Berkeley Universities, Dr Peter Kenmore was in Mumbai for NABARD’s 30th anniversary lecture on ‘Future of Global Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for India.’ This United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization India representative spoke to Yogesh Pawar on the current scenario in agriculture. Some excerpts: There’s a lot of churn over GM technology in India. At a time when the country is grappling with...