While ‘data exclusivity’ clauses will not feature in the India-European Union free trade agreement (FTA), the threat posed by the impending deal to the world’s supply of cheap generic drugs is far from over. India’s commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma assured Michel Sidibe, chief of the United Nations joint programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS) at a meeting this week that India would reject attempts by pharmaceutical giants to include...

-The United Nations   About a billion people, if they wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes, are facing some pretty off-putting and sometimes gruesome graphics on the package cover, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) said today, marking the success of its warning campaign. In its third annual report on the global tobacco epidemic, launched today in Montevideo, Uruguay, the agency said more than one billion people in 19 countries...

As we close in on 20 years of Manmohanomics, it's worth remembering one chant the chattering classes uttered, first with pride, later to console themselves. “Whatever you say, we have the most honest man in Dr. Manmohan Singh. And no one can speak a word against him.” It's less heard now — those affections having been transferred to other punters in the honesty sweepstakes. But growing numbers do say this...

As bank gears up for competition, it may further dilute environmental safeguard policies WITH financial institutions of emerging economies like India and China getting big time into development lending, the World Bank plans reforms to attract its borrowing countries. Some of the important plans are to disburse loans faster and on flexible terms. Bank watchers and civil society groups say the reforms, expected to be in force by the year-end, would...

Land is contentious. With urbanisation and demand for non-agricultural use, coupled with lack of employment and skills for those in small-holder and subsistence-level agriculture, this is understandable. In western Europe, especially in Britain, and more especially in England, land markets were freed up before the Industrial Revolution and access to education and skills became more broad-based. We haven't introduced reforms that enable people to move out of agriculture, or diversify...