‘It will hinder access to quality, affordable generic medicines produced in India' People in Asia living with HIV and who depend on affordable generic AIDS medicines to stay alive have impressed upon the Indian government to stand strong against European Union demands on the sensitive Intellectual Property (IP) chapter in ongoing Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. The EU is pushing for harmful IP provisions to be included in the trade agreement...

Cash transfers cannot and should not replace the public provision of essential goods and services, but rather supplement them. Cash transfers are the latest fad of the international development industry, as the preferred strategy for poverty reduction. And now Indian policymakers are busy catching up. The idea was mooted in the Government's Economic Survey for 2010-11, and the Finance Minister made an explicit announcement in his budget speech for replacing some...

Technically, we know how to check the black economy but the problem is political. More studies or committees and treaties with foreign governments are only to stall action. Another Joint Parliamentary Committee has been announced. The government has been trying to create an impression of being proactive with regard to tackling the black economy. The President's address and the speech by Sonia Gandhi in January mentioned the need to curb it....

By stubbornly overruling the National Advisory Council, the government risks defeating its purpose as a body that speaks for the poor and the disadvantaged. HAS the Manmohan Singh government begun to regard the National Advisory Council (NAC) as an adversary who should be undermined? Going by their exchanges on key issues such as food security, wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), and the implementation of the Scheduled Tribes...

Industrialist Ratan Tata, while questioning in the Supreme Court the Centre's lackadaisical attitude in allowing free distribution and publication of his private conversations with lobbyist Niira Radia recorded by the Directorate-General of Income Tax, sought a comprehensive probe into the leakage. Senior counsel Harish Salve, appearing for Mr. Tata, made this submission before a Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K.Ganguly, hearing a writ petition alleging that the publication of the...