-The Financial Express The agriculture ministry is not reconciled to the grip which Monsanto has on the Indian cottonseed industry owing to the immense preference for its patented, genetically-modified (GM) bollworm-resistance traits. On May 16, Additional Solicitor-General Tushar Mehta intervened in a dispute between Monsanto and its biggest (now divorced) sub-licensee, Hyderabad-based Nuziveedu Seeds. He made written submissions on behalf of the government, a week after hearings on the matter had...

-TheWire.in Conditionalities related to utilising health services do not make any sense in the absence of a service guarantee, and only serve to blame the victims and not the system for its failures. Nearly six months after the prime minister announced maternity benefits of Rs 6,000 to pregnant and lactating mothers, the cabinet yesterday approved the implementation of the maternity benefits programme (MBP) – a scheme that will likely exclude a large...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the regulatory authority for Aadhaar, has written to a Bengaluru-based research organisation, Centre for Internet & Society (CIS), seeking details about a suspected hack attack on government websites that led to the leak of information about 13 crore users. In a recent report, CIS had highlighted that websites run by various government departments, owing to a poor security framework,...

-TheWire.in Aadhaar and its many connotations have grown to be among the most burning issues on the Indian fore today, that every citizen aware of their rights should be taking note of. New Delhi: With the leak of 130 million Aadhaar numbers recently coming to light, several activists, lawyers and ordinary citizens are up in arms about what is increasingly being viewed as a government surveillance system. Keeping this in mind, on...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union home ministry has asked nearly 6,000 of the 13,000 registered NGOs in the country receiving foreign donations to open accounts in nationalised banks to facilitate constant surveillance of their activities. The NGOs have accounts in cooperative banks or state-owned banks, which do not have core-banking facilities. "To maintain surveillance on the activities of NGOs receiving foreign funds, the ministry wants all NGOs registered under the Foreign Contribution...