-The Times of India NEW DELHI: India is set to have a stronger consumer protection law with its own version of class action suits. As the term is usually defined, a class action suit is one in which one or several persons sue on behalf of a larger group of persons, referred to as "the class". However, the Indian version will not allow individuals to sue on behalf of a larger...

-The Business Standard Kolkata arrest shows the IT Act is too easily misused The recent arrest of Ambikesh Mahapatra, a professor at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University, for emailing a comic strip lampooning West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, highlighted glaring flaws in the laws that made the arrest possible — the Information Technology (IT) Act, its amendments, and the Rules framed for its implementation. The strip was an innocuous mash-up that combined stock...

Pfizer tried a new antibiotic on 200 children, allegedly without sufficient documentation. When federal authorities pressed charges, the pharma giant hired investigators to probe attorney general Michael Aondoakaa's and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases.The world’s biggest pharmaceutical company hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children...

KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...