-Livemint.com All our solutions in agriculture, besides management issues, are going to come from science and technology, says Deepak Pental, innovator of GM mustard Last week, the environment ministry’s regulator, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), cleared the commercial release of genetically modified (GM) mustard, leaving it to the government to take a final call. If approved, it will be India’s first food crop developed using transgenic technology, 15 years after Bt...

-The Indian Express Drought for 2nd straight year leaves tribals of Attapaddy at lenders’ mercy, hits pregnant women’s health Attappady: At the sun-baked village of Nallasinka in Attappady, a frail woman is desperately scanning a pipeline that takes water to a private estate, looking for a leak that was once there. “It is five days since water reached our colony. Last week, we survived by collecting water that leaked out of this...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The World Health Organisation has announced a plan to approve generic versions of two expensive bio-therapeutic anti-cancer molecules in an effort to make them available to low and middle-income countries. It said it would invite manufacturers to submit applications for pre-qualification of biologically similar versions of rituximab, used to treat chronic lymphocytic leukaemia and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and trastuzumab, used to treat breast cancer. The pre-qualification process is a mechanism...

-TheWire.in The government’s premier policy-formulating agency recently recommended measures to deregulate the pharmaceutical sector and make essential medicines more expensive. New Delhi: Even as the prime minister repeatedly expresses his commitment to providing affordable medicines in the country, it appears that the NITI Aayog and the Department of Pharmaceuticals (DoP) may be working in an opposing direction. Documents between October 2016 and April 2017 show the intention of various government arms to...

-Scroll.in/ IndiaSpend.com Uttar Pradesh tops the list of under-five mortality. Despite recently revealed improvements, primitive sanitation is killing, retarding the growth or leaving susceptible to disease millions of Indian children, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of the latest available national health data. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Chhattisgarh had India’s highest under-five mortality, higher stunting (low height-for-age) rates and higher prevalence of diarrhoea due to lack of “improved sanitation” –...