-The Telegraph New Delhi: The proportion of jobless people rose significantly in India across education levels between 2011 and 2016, an economics professor's analysis of two sample surveys suggests. The findings by Santosh Mehrotra, chairperson of the Centre for Labour Studies at JNU, appear to question the Centre's claims about job creation although the period under focus covers only the first two years of Narendra Modi's rule, along with the last three...

-The Hindu Health protection scheme for 10.74 crore beneficiary families and 50 crore Indian citizens The healthcare sector has welcomed Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement in his Independence Day address that the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Abhiyaan, also known as Ayushman Bharat or the National Health Protection Mission (AB-NHPM), will be launched on September 25. The government-sponsored health insurance scheme will provide free coverage of up to ?5 lakh a family a year...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The income tax department has allowed referral kickbacks paid to doctors by private hospitals, nursing homes and diagnostic centres and spending on advertisements by doctors as expenses despite such expenditure being disallowed and unethical, a parliamentary panel said on Thursday. The public accounts committee for the Union finance ministry's department of revenue has cited an audit that found that in 19 instances in eight states, income-tax officers had...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Patients' rights advocates in India on Tuesday filed two oppositions in the Indian patent office, challenging patent claims by the US pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences for its medicines sofosbuvir and velpatasvir, used to treat hepatitis-C infections. The oppositions filed by the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+) challenge Gilead's patent applications for the tablet formulations of the fixed dose combination of sofosbuvir and velpatasvir and a new form...

-The Indian Express The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and the NPPA are also documented as having given similar assurances in subsequent meetings. New Delhi: After the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority (NPPA) imposed price caps on coronary stents in February last year, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) is documented as having “indicated” to representatives of foreign medical device companies in a meeting that the Indian government has no plans to...