-The Hindu Business Line   Commerce Ministry asks poultry breeders to assess risk on fresh health concerns New Delhi: India is preparing a second line of defence to protect its domestic poultry industry against competition from cheap chicken leg imports from the US. With the World Trade Organisation recently ruling against India's ban on chicken import from the US on the grounds that it would lead to spread of bird flu, the Commerce Ministry...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's patent regulating agency today rejected a US company's patent claim on a drug to treat hepatitis C, raising hopes that generic drug makers could now produce cheaper versions of the medicine. The Indian Patents Controller has denied a patent to sofosbuvir from Gilead, a US biopharmaceutical company that had last year pledged to make the oral drug available in India and 90 other developing countries at $900...

-Frontline The problem in rural India is not one of too much credit to poor households that leads to debt waivers that damage bank balance sheets, but one of inadequate access to credit from formal sources. IF Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan is to be believed, efforts to help Indian farmers by providing them with cheap(er) credit and relieving them of an unsustainable debt burden only harms them in the...

-The Hindu Though the Union Environment Ministry acknowledges its damage, Uttarakhand's hydroelectric project-driven development agenda remains unchanged Chaaen, a village atop a hill in the picturesque Alaknanda Valley, is infamous for getting a hydroelectric project into trouble. I first visited the village last year while covering the worst flood disaster Uttarakhand had witnessed. On June 26, 2013, as I stood at Narendra Singh's verandah in Chaaen, I noticed how the walls had developed...

-The Tribune The outlook for all things smart is opening up, including Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). Varanasi, set to develop as a Smart City, will be a lighthouse for sectors seeking sustainable ways to handle demographic pressures, finite environmental resources and climate change. The Finance Minister's budget speech has promised a hundred smart cities. With urban India well covered, it is the turn now of smart agriculture, equipped both to enhance food...