-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to re-examine its drug pricing policy for essential medicines, calling it "unreasonable and irrational" as the price of some medicines is at around 4000% higher than what has been fixed by some state governments. A bench headed by Justice TS Thakur asked the ministry of chemicals and fertilizers to analyze and give explanation why the controlled price of...

-The Indian Express SCOPE seeks list of ‘habitual seekers of queries’ from public sector enterprises, former CIC says existing RTI law does not allow such segregation Central public sector companies are trying to identify people who repeatedly use the Right to Information (RT) route to ferret out information from them. Companies are trawling their records about such people and will match data to draw up a checklist. And they plan to use...

-Business Standard Agricultural marketing reform should first take states on board The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) has announced plans for a "national agricultural market" which would involve the integration of 585 major regulated mandis through electronic platforms over three years. Several problems in the current farm marketing system, governed by the monopolistic agricultural produce marketing committees (APMCs), might be addressed if this works: the multiplicity of mandi fees and licences...

-Tehelka The NDA government’s move to open more Jan Aushadhi stores ignores the multitude of issues currently plaguing them Amidst the jostling crowd at the Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital in Shahdara, Delhi, is 68-year-old Suresh Chandra, holding his medical files on one hand and prescription letter on the other. Chandra, who is a lung disease patient, moves towards the Jan Aushadhi store, situated in the hospital premises. Chandra hopes that the government-run medical...

-The Hindu At present, the subsidy is paid to urea producers and importers, not farmers. Consensus continues to elude the Centre on the politically sensitive reform of the urea sector, where it has accumulated an unpaid subsidy bill of Rs. 40,000 crore. Prime Minister Narendra Modi presided over a meeting of senior Ministers and officials last Tuesday, which discussed if the subsidy could be provided directly to farmers through the direct benefit transfer...