-The Hindu Arvind Subramanian brought heft and pizzazz to his role as CEA — but who was listening? Arvind Subramanian has had quite a paradoxical tenure as the Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) to the Finance Minister. While he brought a lot of pizzazz and heft back to the usually staid Economic Surveys and lent his voice to a number of pressing economic issues, the government repeatedly failed to heed his advice or...

-Livemint.com Soaring sales of herbicide tolerant, genetically modified cotton seeds put farmers across states at risk New Delhi: Regulatory failure has led to a surge in sales of unapproved herbicide tolerant (HT) genetically modified (GM) cotton seed packets in the ongoing Kharif planting season, putting thousands of farmers at risk across states such as Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. The regulatory failure has been precipitated by the fact that the genetic engineering...

-Newsclick.in Electoral bonds are neither 'transparent' nor 'anonymous'. In the latest revelation, file notings of the Election Commission of India (ECI) have showed that it had decided against uploading a letter – which talked about its reservations regarding the Finance Act, 2017 and introduction of the electoral bonds – on their website. The notings have been disclosed through a response to an application under the Right to Information Act (RTI) filed by...

-TheWire.in Has Switzerland’s eagerness to export its vocational training and education model to India led to an unsatisfactory compromise that ultimately hurts the battle against poverty: granting a private company exclusive rights to the curriculum developed with Swiss taxpayers’ money? This year, India and Switzerland will celebrate 70 years of a Friendship Treaty that was signed by the two countries in 1948. A decade ago, the 60th anniversary of the Treaty was...

-The Indian Express The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the NPPA are also documented as having given similar assurances in subsequent meetings. New Delhi: After the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) imposed price caps on coronary stents in February last year, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is documented as having “indicated” to representatives of foreign medical device companies in a meeting that the Indian government has no plans to...