-The Hindu Council leaves the 5% tax levied on vaccines unchanged. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council on Saturday decided to waive the tax levied on two critical drugs against COVID-19 and mucormycosis — tocilizumab and amphotericin B — and reset the tax rate to 5% for 14 major pandemic relief items, till September 30. Non-BJP-ruled States registered a strong dissent, terming the continued imposition of GST on critical COVID supplies and...
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PM's address to nation: Top 5 announcements in Modi's speech today -Vivek Punj
-Livemint.com * Centre to take over vaccination programme from states, provide free jabs to Indians aged 18 years and above * PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana extended till November this year, to benefit 80 crore Indians Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a slew of decisions on Monday regarding the vaccination drive against coronavirus. The Prime Minister announced that central government will take back control of the vaccination programme from states and provide free...
More »Jean Dreze, the Belgian-born hunger economics expert, interviewed by Sindhu Bhattacharya (Moneycontrol.com)
-Moneycontrol.com Jean Dreze, the Belgian-born hunger economics expert, on the devastation of Covid, what plagues MNREGA, central government’s relief measures, stimulus packages, vaccination drive and more. The big lesson from the havoc wrought by Covid-19 is that India must abandon the “fragmented” US model of healthcare, which is a colossal failure, according to developmental economist Jean Dreze. A Belgian-born hunger economics expert who has co-authored books with Nobel laureates Amartya Sen and...
More »US vaccine ‘gift’ to India may not be substantial -Suhasini Haidar
-The Hindu Vaccine gifts of 2-3 million doses may have little impact on India: officials The government on Friday welcomed the U.S. decision to lift restrictions under its Defence Production Act on the export of vaccine ingredients to AstraZeneca vaccine manufacturers worldwide, which would help the Serum Institute of India produce more doses. However, Washington’s announcement of gifting India and dozens of other countries with a first tranche of 25 million doses of...
More »A fatal war on transparency -Aniket Aga and Chitrangada Choudhury
-The Hindu Official secrecy on pandemic policies aggravates a crisis In August 2020, the Modi government constituted the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC) as a nodal agency on all matters related to vaccine administration and rollout. Asked under the Right to Information (RTI) Act for details of the NEGVAC’s meetings, the Health Ministry, which anchors the expert group, replied that it does not know where the concerned documents...
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