Unlike US where you pay $200 for an Iphone and then $80+ per month for next for 24 months to indirectly pay for the phone costs, cellphone service providers are not allowed to club their plans with the cellphone costs --- which is really good.

The cost of data plan could be as cheap as $2 per month in India, and cellphone service as low as 2 cents per minute (now even cheaper).

It makes no sense for Indians to buy a $800 iPhone then.

Why would Novartis make generics when they get 60 times the money from their main brand?

The very idea of generics is that after patents lapse, some life saving drugs can be made by other companies based on the original composition. Normally, patents are valid for 20 years after which they lapse. In this case, Novartis wants to continue with their patent by having a minor addition to the drug formula. Many countries don't allow this, which includes India.

If the court would have allowed Novartis, this would have been the death of all generics as we know them (as everyone would have used this loophole to keep the drugs "evergreen", i.e, always patented).

Add a new salt to the old medicine and call it more absorbable and patent for 20 more years --- someone had to call their fraud.

Countries like South Africa that are struggling with HIV essentially grant patents without any review. No wonder a simple TB drug like Linezolid costs 66 times in Africa as opposed to India. Even United states allows patents with minor additions. No wonder drugs are so costly in US too.

There may be a zillion things bad about India, but their patenting process is the least f***d up when compared to the peers. No to software patents. No to 'evergreen' drug patents. Good job!

Add a new salt to the old medicine and call it more absorbable and patent for 20 more years --- someone had to call their fraud.

Countries like South Africa that are struggling with HIV essentially grant patents without any review. No wonder a simple TB drug like Linezolid costs 66 times in Africa as opposed to India. Even United states allows patents with minor additions. No wonder drugs are so costly in US too.

There may be a zillion things bad about India, but their patenting process is the least f***d up when compared to the peers. No to software patents. No to 'evergreen' drug patents. Good job!

@Boregardless: How about you stop your racist tripe and take a dose of facts:

The origin of MSRA has been primarily traced from Europe, and thats where today there are maximum infections (and deaths).

Read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methicillin-resistant_Staphylococcus_aureus#US_and_UK

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) primarily originated from UK. MRSA was responsible for 94,360 serious infections and associated with 18,650 hospital stay-related deaths in the United States in 2005. MRSA is thought to have caused 1,652 deaths in 2006 in UK up from 51 in 1993. Worldwide, an estimated 2 billion people carry some form of S. aureus; of these, up to 53 million (2.7% of carriers) are thought to carry MRSA.[59] In the United States, 95 million carry S. aureus in their noses; of these, 2.5 million (2.6% of carriers) carry MRSA. As a matter of fact # of hospital aquired infections (that includes MRSA) in Europe ranges from 4% to 10% of all hospital admissions.

I am not surprised that they found a drug resistant TB strain in India. The only thing that surprises me is why not every disease is drug resistant in India.

Many poor Indians would pop anti-biotic tablets like candies after buying them for few cents from an over the counter store (its in direct contrast to the US system where even after paying a fortune you don't get antibiotics). They are often cheap, more or less affective and gets them rid of the problems...but not always.

Antibiotics would require you to finish an entire course, else they become ineffective for ever. There are uneducated idiots in India who would pop one or two tablets and never heed to advice by the pharmacist (and at times they would not have enough money to buy the complete course too).

So why are we surprised that there is an emergence of a strain that no antibiotics can cure? Most likely the previous commenter is right - they haven't found an alternative antibiotic yet. I am sure some random Indian lab would develop it in a few months, but it won't work for long - its more of a systemic problem than a medical issue.

to save itself from Canada, Cuba and Mexico !! And yes some 10,000+ aren't enough.

That's nice logic. You suggest it is right to suck it up to US, Canada and the other first world countries without a single noise....and when other countries ask for the same, its right to cry Privacy concerns...

It does smells hypocrisy...

Duuh....Chill Dude.

"If blackberry communications are no longer privileged the companies would do XYZ"

1. Blackberry communications are indeed not privileged. Its just that the dumb Indian security agencies cannot get a way around it like the US.
2. If blackberries goes away, companies would switch to Nokia, Apple or any other damn device...

But what's really gonna happen is that Blackberry would cave soon, and tell the government officials, "you nutjobs should have figured it out yourself without creating a big fracas, but lets help. Anyways thanks for the publicity !!"

There are two aspects to the article:

1. A security researcher arrested for possession of an EVM machine
2. The security researcher establishing the fact that EVMs in India are vulnerable to security attacks

As per 1, why is the Indian police wrong? If a stolen object is found with you, its you who are liable. Whether it was given by "unknown resources" is not important.

For 2. Is that something new? Is there any software system that is 100% secure? But don't we still use them - in banks, in flights and everywhere. The question is benefits vs risks. Now before someone argues about that here, I would say, please stop trolling and be reasonable. Indian election scenario is nowhere close to US or Europe or any developed country. If there is any real Security expert out here, he can vouch that security vulnerabilities are 90% because of humans and processes, and only 10% because of machines.

So what's the Indian voting scenario? We are talking about over 700 million voters spread across thousands of constituencies, in more than 5 phases, spread across more than 20 days, that involve more than 100 thousand administrative personals that are managed by an autonomous body called "Election Commission of India". During the election, the Election Commission has absolute powers. It can suspend bureaucrats, order an arrest, or re-voting in a particular constituency. Fortunately this is one of the few agencies in India that are widely respected (by all parties) for its non-partisan role. These EVMs just make it a bit easier for these election commission guys to administer a free and fare election. But still the entire operation is a no less a challenge...

Compare this with just 10 years back. When booth looting was a common story in some of the disconnected country side regions. You heard it right - booth looting refers to some armed men storming the election room, stamping ballet papers for their own candidates; and all it required was mere 20 minutes to alter the result. But these machines ensure that only "1 vote can be cast in 1 min". So even if there is any forced capture, in one hour these guys can cast at the max 60 votes. And one hour is enough for the security to arrive and take remedial action.

Also unlike US, the scale is huge in India. In order to really affect the elections one needs to rig a lot many machines, which is not very practical.

What these security researchers are suggesting is to dump the machines and go back to paper based ballet. What we must also consider is the cost of doing that. India spent around $1 billion for its last electronic voting based election. My question is that by spending N times the amount, and introducing paper based ballet, can someone ensure a free and fare election? If not, why rob this huge amount from poor people.

Neither is the recent flooding any form of joke for Pakistanis, nor is the safeguarding of its population (against terrorism) any joke for India.

Privacy may be a big concern in the US and EU, but most surveys in India actually give precedence to Security over privacy; even if it leads to Government spying on communication. Trust me, there is nothing facetious about this...

Yes you are wrong :) That's in Pakistan, not India. Do read BBC, NewYorkTimes or as a matter of fact any newspaper sometimes.