Job Opening at PRS Legislative

“PRS Legislative Research www.prsindia.org is seeking applications for the position of Research Assistant (RA), a support-level role in the PRS team. The RA will be required to undertake tasks related to basic research and data collation. This is a support role, but will give the candidate an excellent opportunity to understand various facets of policy making in India. The candidate [...]

Public consultation, the right way

The Bt-brinjal consultation process has been unprecedented in several respects. Often we find politician’s referring to the metaphorical device of a “public debate” without following up on it. However, Minister of State for Environment and Forests, Mr. Jairam Ramesh followed through on his promises. What we saw were 7 public consultations, in which 8000 people participated. Views of expert scientists, farmers, chief ministers, non-governmental organisations were also solicited and considered.

The privacy debate is raging online with the recent statements by Mark Zuckerberg that Online Privacy is a fading norm. the onset of cloud computing presents another challenge to online privacy. Columbia Law Prof. Eben Moglen at a recent talk given at the Internet Society of New York, lucidly explains the threats posed to privacy [...]

TELECOM REGULATORY AUTHORITY OF INDIA TRAI will be holding Open House Discussion on the Amendments required in the Telecom Consumers’ Protection and Redressal of Grievances Regulations, 2007 and Foreign Investment in Broadcasting Sector on 24th and 25th February at Delhi. Interested Stakeholders/industry representatives are invited to participate. For more details please click here and here.

Telecom Tiger Correspondent reports that the Supreme Court (SC) has passed an interim order exempting telecom operators to pay licence fees taking into account revenues from non-telecom services as well. The order is pending a final decision by the court. The background to this is a petition which was filed in 2003 by two telecom [...]

No Longer A Moot Problem: The extent of CCI’s jurisdiction

A few months ago, with the ink still not dry on the notification enforcing the Competition Act, 2002, I drafted a moot court problem for the students of my alma matter on it. The problem essentially concerned the jurisdictional hurdles which the Competition Commission of India will have to pass.

Cabinet nod to copyright amendments

The Union Cabinet today approved the proposal to introduce a Bill to amend the Copyright Act, 1957.  The press release notes, that the “Ministry of Human Resource Development has proposed the amendments in order to gain clarity, remove operational difficulties and to address the newer issues that have emerged in the context of digital technology [...]

Experts, Artists and Idiots

Image by Kaddele via Flickr There is rarely been a movie in which Aamir acted which I did not enjoy. His acting, performances and selection of collaborating film artists has been consistently excellent. However, even I know (not bieng the stardust reading type) that Aamir enjoys a bit of a reputation of a gadfly venturing [...]

I just came across this bit of news that  Law Ministry has finally given its approval to the Notice Inviting Application (NIA) that outlines the policy for allocating the 3 G spectrum. As Law Ministry only last month raised certain objections that led to this  deferral of the auction 3 G Spectrum till further notice. [...]

Yet another spectrum issue… Justice denied to ISP

Image via Wikipedia Yet another spectrum issue… but this time both DoT and TDSAT has to share the blame on an equal basis…!! Last year ISPAI ( a lobbying organization of ISP similar to COAI) sued DoT for making them surrender 2.5 GHz Wimax spectrum and ‘discriminating’ against ISPs. The spectrum was already allotted to [...]