-The Hindu Tropical diseases have often been neglected by pharmaceuticals because the size of the drug market is smaller, people have lower incomes and companies are uncertain about IPR January marked an important breakthrough in the fight against tropical diseases. Researchers and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in Delhi found a drug candidate that prevented TB and malaria pathogens from infecting human blood cells. It is not just that...

-Economic and Political Weekly   This article attempts to resolve the puzzle of public distribution system leakages using the latest available data. Leakages remain high, but there is clear evidence of improvement in recent years, especially in states -- including Bihar -- that have undertaken bold PDS reforms. The main source of leakages is the "above the poverty line" quota, which is due to be phased out under the National Food Security...

-The Hindu The report of the High-Level Committee for reviewing environmental laws has a misplaced focus on speedy project clearances and wrongly attributes their delays to environmental laws The report of the High-Level Committee (HLC) on a review of environmental laws may no longer be in the news, but its potential for impacting environmental governance in the country has not diminished. That potential will become real soon enough. A note of caution...

Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and...

-DNA Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, popularly knowns as NREGA, is the most romantic and largest development project in human history. It is extremely popular and invited widespread hatred. It embodies remarkable scope for alienated people and effortless corruption for powerful people at the lower level. The amount spent on it over the last nine years is about Rs3.50 lakh crore. The average number of jobs generated per year...