-Down to Earth 2023 is the International Year of the Millets and during the year, efforts would be made to promote this superfood 2023 is the International Year of the Millets and during the year, efforts would be made to promote this superfood. As millets are adapted to grow in dry and arid regions, they attract big businesses and companies in times when climate change is making cultivation of other cereals difficult. But...

-The Hindu With the Rajya Sabha Standing Committee on Health expressing concern over the high cost of cancer treatment, the Government invoking Section 100 of the Patents Act is a way forward The subject of the spiralling costs of cancer medicines and their implications that have frequently been highlighted the world over were dwelled on in a recent report (“Cancer Care Plan and Management”) by the Rajya Sabha’s Standing Committee on Health....

-Down to Earth In this decade, 231 more crops have been removed from the protection of piracy provided in Section 3 of the Biodiversity Act, bringing the total to 421  The Supreme Court, in a November 22 order, has ordered the Karnataka High Court to continue hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) on biopiracy which it had sent to the National Green Tribunal in 2013. Biopiracy refers to the practice of commercially exploiting...

-IndiaSpend.com/ Scroll.in PepsiCo has appealed in the Delhi High Court against the revocation of its registration of a potato variety. An ongoing court case between multinational food and beverage company PepsiCo India and the petitioner, farmers’ rights activist Kavitha Kuruganti, has highlighted the tensions between plant-breeding corporations which want a stricter intellectual property rights regime and farmers’ rights in developing countries. International intellectual property rights conventions seek to give plant variety breeders the...

-The Hindu They write to Prime Minister asking him to renegotiate the draft proposal to waive intellectual property rights on vaccines and highlight the need for active engagement to improve it A group of non governmental organisations has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to prod the Union Commerce Ministry into “proactively engaging” with a draft proposal at the World Trade Organisation-TRIPS in Geneva to waive intellectual property rights, mostly controlled by...