-The Hindu As the government pushes for ‘Make in India’, it could begin by unmaking the damage the post-1991 reforms inflicted on domestic industry. This year marks 25 years since the so-called “economic reforms” were launched in July 1991. By now, broad contours of the policies and practices that characterised such reforms are well known, viz. radical deregulation, marketisation and privatisation of the industrial, technological and financial sectors, and an across-the-board...

-The Indian Express Government privileges the private over the public, preferring trade to health In a dramatic development, US industry groups recently claimed the Indian government offered them a “private” assurance that compulsory licences will not be issued, save in eMergencies and for non-comMercial purposes. Needless to state, such an assurance flies in the face of the Patents Act and the public health safeguards enshrined in it. Illustratively, Section 84 mandates that...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: International humanitarian agency Medecins Sans Frontieres has filed an application to block US pharmaceutical company Pfizer from obtaining a patent in India for a vaccine against pneumonia and allow Indian vaccine manufacturers to make low-cost versions. The patent opposition moved by MSF has claimed that Pfizer's patent application, which describes methods of conjugating 13 serotypes (strains) of the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae into a single carrier vaccine, does not...

-The Indian Express In spite of attempts to dress it as one, Aadhaar bill is not a money bill. The issue of bills being categorised as money bills in an attempt to circumvent the Rajya Sabha has once again become live. On Friday, the Lok Sabha passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, which Finance Minister Arun Jaitley asserted was a money bill....

-The Telegraph Chennai: Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) has agreed to compensate nearly 600 forMer employees who were exposed to toxic Mercury in a thermometer factory that had been relocated from New York to Tamil Nadu by another investor in 1984 following environmental concerns in the US. The thermometer factory is located at Kodaikanal, around 430km from here. The plant was shut down in 2011 after Greenpeace activists found Mercury waste in the...