Editorials

Extract: The Government of Bengal has issued [in Calcutta] a resolution containing instructions to the heads of departments for employment in Government service of persons now employed in connection with the war. In filling up vacancies at the end of war, preference will be given to men who have rendered …

Extract: A meeting of the Imperial War Graves Commission held [in London] on July 24th at which Lord Islington, Sir William Garstin, Mr. Rudyard Kipling and others were present adopted the recommendations of the Committee consisting of Lord Islington, W.P. Schreiner, Sahibzada Ahmed Aftabakhan and Sir Pattani which had been …

Extract: The draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018, recognises privacy as a fundamental right. It has provisions to protect personal data as an essential facet of information privacy. The objective of the Bill is to balance the growth of the digital economy and use of data as a means of …

Extract: Among the ideas in the draft policy are a sunset clause on discounts that can be offered by e-commerce firms and restrictions on sellers backed by marketplace operators. The aim may be to prevent large players from pricing out the competition though unfair practices, but taken too far such …

Extract: From the very beginning it was clear that the entire issue had less to do with the correctness of the Supreme Court judgment and more to do with the way it was interpreted, and sometimes deliberately misinterpreted. The judgment had not altered or read down any of the key …

Extract: Calls for data localisation are not new. It has been a mainstay of Indian policymakers’ demands from foreign technology companies. The Justice Srikrishna Committee in its report accompanying the draft Personal Data Protection Bill released on July 27 notes that eight of the top 10 most accessed websites in …

An unusually bright meteor was seen at 7-15 P.M. yesterday [August 1, in Calcutta]. Its direction as observed from the eastern end of the Curzon Gardens was nearly S.S.W. and it appeared to fall vertically first coming into view at an altitude of about 50 degrees, increasing in brilliancy until …

A clampdown on the sale of oxytocin will have severe public health consequences The Union Health Ministry’s ban on the retail sale and private manufacture of oxytocin, expected to kick off on September 1, is an extremely ill-thought-out one. The drug, a synthetic version of a human hormone, is a …

The RBI’s decision to raise benchmark rates spotlights concerns about inflation The decision by the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee to raise benchmark interest rates again by 25 basis points is a prudent one. This is the second successive rate increase in as many months, a response to …

The polio endgame is proving to be challenging. On June 29, 28 children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were paralysed by the circulating vaccine-derived polio virus Type 2 (cVDPV). The World Health Organisation (WHO) has assessed the overall public health risk at the “national level to be …