-The Hindu The Supreme Court has denied Novartis a patent for its anti-cancer drug Gleevec. This leaves the door open for Indian pharmaceutical companies to produce their own versions of the drug. Since these are sold at roughly one tenth of the patented brand price, for thousands of cancer patients it means the difference between medicine and no medicine at all. It is not just cancer patients that will benefit, but...
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What Right To Education? Failing to meet the prescribed norms, half of the existing schools will lose their recognition -Arvind Panagariya
-The Times of India The three-year compliance period for the Right to Education (RTE) Act is just over. What has the Act accomplished? Sadly, not very much that is positive. A key provision in the law abolishes board examinations and grants automatic promotion to each child to the next grade at the end of the academic year. It also requires the award of a diploma to all at the end of eight...
More »Government hints at broadcasting reform agenda- Shuchi Bansal
-Live Mint I&B minister raises prospect of independent broadcasting authority, says govt may be forced to set up ratings system Information and broadcasting (I&B) minister Manish Tewari on Friday raised the prospect of an independent broadcasting authority and said the government may be forced to set up a ratings system unless the industry took steps to put in place a credible method of ranking television programmes, in a series of statements that...
More »India Jobs Program Scam Pays Wages to Dead Workers -Andrew MacAskill, Unni Krishnan & Tushar Dhara
-Bloomberg The corpse of Indian farmer Bengali Singh burned to ash atop a blazing funeral pyre on the banks of the river Ganges in 2006. Five years later, the dead man was recorded as being paid by India's $33 billion rural jobs program to dig an irrigation canal in Jharkhand state. Officials in his village and the surrounding region used at least 500 identities, including those of Singh, a disabled child of...
More »Rise in power tariffs shifts debate to quality- Kirthi V Rao and Utpal Bhaskar
-Live Mint Tariffs reach at least Rs.4 per unit in many states, finds analysis, amid efforts to bail out state discoms Indian domestic consumers in 16 states are paying at least `4 per unit for power and in some cases even more, according to an analysis, thus giving the lie to the long-held axiom that raising tariffs is nearly impossible in India given the political compulsions. The finding also shows conclusively that...
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