Compulsory licence can go a long way to ensure access to cheaper drugs In a momentous development, the Indian patent office issued the ever-compulsory licence in a highly contentious pharmaceutical patent case. The decision is a thumping victory for several patients and health activists who have been fighting what can only be labelled as highly inequitable pricing strategies by multinational drug firms for the past several decades. In August 2011, Natco, an...

In a landmark decision, India’s intellectual property office on Monday allowed Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma Ltd to make and sell a copycat version of German drug maker Bayer AG’s patented cancer treatment Nexavar. It’s the first time that an Indian company has been granted the so-called compulsory licence to market a generic version of a patented drug. The drug, patented by Bayer in India in 2008, is used in the treatment of...

In 1953, the authors of India's first-ever crime survey presented a grim picture of the state of the new country's police forces. “There has been,” authors of Crime in Indiareported, “no improvement in the methods of investigation or in the application of science to this work. No facilities exist in any of the rural police stations and even in most of the urban police stations for scientific investigation.” From the National Crime...

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to immediately order an impartial probe into the role of the Chhattisgarh police in the case of alleged torture of tribal teacher Soni Sori, now detained in the Raipur jail on charges of helping Maoists. It wants proper medical facilities provided to the 35-year-old mother, who was tortured so badly that “...two foreign body [sic] recovered of size 2.5 x 1.5...

Even legislation championed by Sonia Gandhi can get stuck in bureaucratic limbo—witness the fate of amendments that needed to be made quickly to a law that seeks to safeguard the rights of tribals. The combined backing of the National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by Congress president Gandhi, and the political leadership of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government hasn’t been enough to put in place new guidelines meant to remove the...