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In the past two years the UPA government, with considerable fanfare, has attempted to project a view that it is serious about bringing about radical changes as regards access to health care. A slew of … Read more

The Supreme Court’s judgement throwing out Novartis’ attempts to secure a patent for the leukaemia drug Glivec has created a frenzy in the pink press – both in India and abroad. For them, one of … Read more

P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } Earlier this week, the UN made history by adopting the first ever global Treaty to regulate trade in conventional armaments. The Treaty, among other measures, seeks to prevent and eradicate … Read more

On 26th December 2004 the then UPA-I Government promulgated an ordinance — The Patents (Amendment) Ordinance, 2004. The ordinance was issued by the government to change the then existing Indian Patents Act in order to … Read more

The expose of alleged bribery in the Indian deal to buy Agusta Westland helicopters from the Italian company, Finmeccanica, led to a brief storm of media debates and anguished commentaries, followed by some official probes … Read more

The last fifty years is witness to a virtual explosion in the creation of new knowledge. Capitalism has used this characteristic of modern science and technology to constantly create products and tools to constantly revolutionize … Read more

More than 2000 people died and over 10,000 were affected by industrial pollution during the 1950s and 60s in and around the coastal Japanese town of Minamata. A chemicals factory of the Chisso Corporation using … Read more

STRANGELY enough, the more lawyers a government has, the more poor are the draft laws it produces. Apart from the still continuing fiasco of the Lok Pal Bill, we have “The Protection and Utilisation of … Read more

AARON Swartz, an activist for free information, a precocious talent who had designed and developed a whole host of tools that we all use today, committed suicide on January 11. He was facing 35 years … Read more

  India has a reputation for announcing policies that are poorly conceived, insufficiently thought through and badly implemented, and which later run into huge problems causing losses to both stakeholders and the public, often leaving … Read more

Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh last week unveiled a new Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (henceforth STI for short) at the centenary-year Indian Science Congress in Kolkata. The STI Policy is conceived as the next important … Read more

This column is admittedly, and regrettably, late in running an article commemorating the 50th year after the publication in September 1962 of Rachel Carsons’ “Silent Spring,” arguably one of the most influential books of our … Read more