-Down to Earth Tough new conditions emerge in the compromise deal to ease WTO intellectual property barriers to production of COVID-19 medical tools We are back to square one. Back to the beginning after 18 months of a wearying, tortuous series of negotiations that carried on while millions of lives hung in the balance — and still do. The waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights on medicines, vaccines and diagnostics to fight the...

-TheWire.in "With the additional grains under PMGKAY also set to stop after March 2022, the hunger crisis is likely to exacerbate in the country," the Right to Food Campaign said. New Delhi: The Right to Food Campaign has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the “crisis” in income decline and severe food insecurity, especially among the economically weaker and marginalised sections of society due to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying the Pradhan...

-The Hindu It was a long struggle for Suvam to get his ID cards printed with only his mother’s name The PAN allotment process is perhaps not as cumbersome as it used to be. But for Suvam Sinha, it took seven years to get his PAN card and other documents — the way he wished them. That is, without his father’s name on them. On February 11, the 23-year-old celebrated his victory with...

-TheNewsMinute.com “The suggestion to have a uniform syllabus across the country and a single board is the brainchild of the right wing, which wants to create a homogenous nation, in place of the wonderfully diverse and multicultural society we have now.” In the crucial debate around federalism and states’ rights, one of the biggest issues is education. The subject was moved from the State List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution...

-The Hindu Its lustre is fading as there are threats from emerging social and environmental risks, but the question is how Kerala has long been recognised to have done many things right. For years the darling of development experts, non-governmental organisations and social activists, the ‘Kerala Model’ seemed to show that impressive levels of human development indicators — in health, education and quality of life, comparable even to some rich countries —...