-The Hindu Business Line From maker of versions of drugs, India's pharmaceutical industry has turned a top innovator Twenty years ago, Ranbaxy was a home-spun drug-maker. The Indian Patents Act allowed companies to make chemically-similar versions of innovative drugs. Visionaries in the pharmaceutical sector, like Parvinder Singh (Ranbaxy's key architect and member of its promoter family) and Anji Reddy (founder of Dr Reddy's Laboratories), were alive. And the pharmaceutical industry did not have...

-Economic and Political Weekly While the Supreme Court decision in the recent Novartis case has cleared the way for production of generic drugs in India, doctors have to prescribe cheaper alternatives to costly brands if patients with limited means are to benefit. What is being hailed as a victory in the struggle for affordable medicines in the country will actually be one only when there is a pro-patient slant to the...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Supreme Court judgment on the Novartis-Glivec case is remarkable because it has gone beyond the specific technical and legal issues surrounding patents and has put the matter in a much larger political and economic perspective. The deeper implication of the judgment is that it is not only justified to deny patents when incremental innovation is trivial as in the Glivec case. The judgment has linked the...

-The Hindu Business Line     Technology has improved the poor's access to healthcare. India grapples with the issue of a major divide between the well-to-do and the lower end of the population strata. The challenge of uplifting the ‘below the poverty line' section of the population remains a challenging task. One of the areas which ranks high on this priority list is access to healthcare facilities. As is well known, events related to emergency...

-PTI JOHANNESBURG: States may not prevent access to websites because they display opinions or beliefs that are critical of governments or established systems of thought, UN Human Rights Commissioner Navanethem "Navi" Pillay said here. Pillay, a South African of Indian Tamil origin, was delivering a lecture on 'Human Rights Achievements and Challenges in a Rapidly Changing World' at the University of the Witwatersrand as part of South Africa's celebration of Human Rights...