-The Times of India The Centre on Thursday responded to the Supreme Court's concern over spiralling prices of essential medicines and promised to make all-out efforts to put under strict price control regime all the 348 drugs included in the National List of Essential Medicines (NLEM), 2011. A bench comprising Justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya had, in the last hearing, expressed concern over the shrinking list of medicines under...

-The Telegraph   The Supreme Court today asked the Centre to ensure that drug prices go down, not up, if and when a new price control policy comes into force. “Prices may go down but should not go up because of policy,” Justice S.J. Mukhopadhyay, sitting alongside senior judge G.S. Singhvi, said. “Bring it down, don’t escalate it in the name of policy,” the bench told additional solicitor-general Parag Tripathi, who was speaking...

There are structural aspects to a problem as complex as corruption. These cannot be tackled through punishment alone. Just as our society tends to latch on to holy men for miracle cures, in recent weeks, the urban middle classes have placed great hopes on an anti-corruption movement led by a pious man in a Gandhi cap. (The other claim on leadership by a holy man in red robes did not...

-The Times of India   The high drama over Baba Ramdev's midnight eviction and action against the peaceful gathering has shifted the focus away from the central is sue raised by the Baba – black money overseas – to the right to protest in a democracy. This being the case, there is danger of an uninformed debate on black money taking over, guided more by emotions and populist talk rather than...

After a government report confirmed major ethical violations in trials of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccines on Indian schoolgirls, senior doctors are calling for transparency in clinical trials conducted under private-public partnerships. The report is yet to be placed in the public domain, but its contents were revealed early May by senior doctors who assisted in its preparation, sparking outrage among public health advocates and women’s rights groups. HPV is an umbrella...