-Hindustan Times The World Bank should ensure “greater transparency and accountability” while factoring in subjective opinion-based indices as inputs for its World Governance Indicators (WGI) that has significant weightage in sovereign ratings, the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) said in a series of tweets citing an internal working paper, and called for independent Indian think tanks to bring out similar perception-based indices for the world in order to...

-ThePrint.in According to a paper published by Brandeis University, challenges to reservation best represent the attack on the Dalit revolution. Due to Ambedkar’s struggle and contribution, the Constitution provided a new set of rights for Dalits. The provisions of representation in services and legislatures created new openings for Dalits. Reservation policies allowed Dalits upward economic mobility, and presence in educational institutions, which was earlier considered to be the Monopoly and privilege of...

-The Hindu Does the JPC adopted bill fail to protect individuals against Government agencies? The story so far: The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) constituted to examine India’s proposed data protection law, the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, released its report on Monday. It contains a number of suggestions that could strengthen the final law, among others, a recognition that promotion of the digital economy cannot take precedence over the protection of citizen...

-Newsclick.in The recent agreements between Medicine Patent Pool and Big Pharma are being projected as benevolent gestures from pharma companies in sharing their patented technologies with other countries. The fact is it is working towards cementing its Monopoly power further. The development of anti-viral oral pills to combat COVID-19 will, hopefully, make the fight against the pandemic more promising. While Merck has developed the anti-viral pill Molnupiravir, Pfizer has come up with...

-Newsclick.in Can legal and regulatory action be taken against Facebook for actively abetting the spread of communal hatred? While a precedent exists in the US, carrying out the same in India will prove a challenge. So, what’s new about whistleblower Frances Haugen’s revelations about how the top brass of the now-renamed Facebook turned a blind eye to the proliferation of incendiary, hateful and false information on its social media platform, how the...