-The Times of India Union steel minister Beni Prasad Verma's claim, that he was happy with inflation as higher food prices have helped farmers, borders on the ludicrous. A few weeks back P Chidambaram also attracted flak when he said that consumers have to pay more for sugar, rice and wheat as procurement prices are raised to benefit farmers. Linkages between high food prices and farmers' welfare is dubious because there...
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Go beyond CAG: Shout less about notional losses, do more on genuine coal sector reform
-The Times of India Expectedly, CAG's reports on coal, power and Delhi airport have raised a storm. Yes, one takeaway is the need for transparency in resource disbursal and use, be it minerals or land. But if CAG - whose job is to keep accounts - habitually hypothesises about presumptive revenue loss owing ostensibly to absence of this or that policy in the past, where will it end? Its coal audit...
More »CDSCO drafting new norms for financial compensation-Mahim Pratap Singh
-The Hindu In the year 2011, 438 people died due to Serious Adverse Events (SAEs) during medicine trials in India, but pharmaceutical companies provided financial compensation in only 16 such cases. The total amount paid in compensation in all the 16 cases adds up to Rs. 34.88 lakh, with the highest amount being Rs. 5 lakh, and the lowest being Rs. 50,000. This makes 2011 only the second year, for which data are...
More »Govt on warpath with plan panel-Kounteya Sinha
-The Times of India The idea of a single National Health Mission to address the health challenges of the country's rural and urban population, as envisaged by the Planning Commission, is in the eye of a storm. The Union health ministry has made its stand clear that a uniform approach can never work. The letter written by the ministry to the Commission says that the health facilities in rural areas conform to a...
More »Basudeb Acharia, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture interviewed by Gargi Parsai
-The Hindu The debate on the pros and cons of genetically engineered/modified crops is universal. In India, in the face of vociferous protests, the controversy has only deepened leading to a moratorium on cultivation of Bt Brinjal crop — the first GM food crop sought to be commercialised. Gargi Parsai spoke to Basudeb Acharia, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture, on its new report, “Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food...
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