-Down to Earth Giving patents to foreign-made medicines will add to patients' woes, they urge Health activists staged a protest in front of the office of Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Friday, demanding that the government should ensure that oral drugs to treat Hepatitis C are made available to patients. The demonstrators were later assured by the ministry officials that they would look into the matter...

-Down to Earth Bad loans of public sector banks to business are more than double the food subsidy There are some things you simply do not do in the liberalised economy. You do not put bank loans under the lens-unless these are ballooning out of control. That is, until such loans are likely to jeopardise the entire banking system and send the economy into a tailspin. And there's another thing: you don't...

-Down to Earth Delisting fruits and vegetables from APMC Act in Congress-ruled states will not benefit farmers Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi last December said fruits and vegetables will become affordable if states allowed farmers to directly sell their produce to consumers. He also directed the chief ministers in Congress-ruled states to delist fruits and vegetables from the Agriculture Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) Act. The Act makes it mandatory for farmers to sell...

-Down to Earth Benefits of government schemes and policies go to big farmers, shows survey undertaken by CSDS on behalf of farmers' association A study by a premier social sciences research institute reinforces what policymakers and media have been talking about the past few years-that India is going through a deep agrarian crisis. The Centre for Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), based in Delhi, found that given an option majority of farmers...

-Live Mint Melinda Gates says India is closer than ever to the goal of eradicating poverty and improving access to health for all New Delhi: Philanthropist Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and one of the most influential women in the world, maintains that India is closer than ever to the goal of eradicating poverty and improving access to health for all. In their annual letter, published...