-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Cancer medicines and stents may soon be available at a substantially lower price. The health ministry is working on a model to procure such drugs in bulk at a negotiated price and supply them to hospitals and consumers through its own retail system like 'Jan Aushadhi' stores. . The idea is to bring down prices of expensive cancer drugs and stents while not putting pressure on...

-The Hindu The Union Cabinet gave ex post facto approval on Wednesday to provide an additional 50 days of work to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme beneficiaries during the current financial year wherever drought or natural calamities have been notified. The scheme guarantees 100 days of work. The decision will enable the States to provide additional wage employment to the rural poor in drought-affected areas, the release said. “The poorest...

-Business Standard The lens with which we report India's farm crisis has to change As we head for another year of trouble in the countryside, it is time to discard the enduring media tropes of rural distress. Like the image of a grizzled Indian farmer, framed against his parched field looking up at an unrelenting sky. Or the all too pervasive conflation of rural distress with farmer suicides. Such characterisation offers the...

-Livemint.com Team of civil servants makes presentation at PMO about plans, briefs top officials of NITI Aayog on strategy New Delhi: Undeterred by opposition from trade unions, the Narendra Modi government appears to have made up its mind to pursue labour reforms to boost manufacturing that could potentially absorb millions of workers in a country that will have the world’s largest workforce within the next 15 years. The labour ministry is understood...

-Economic and Political Weekly After coming to power in 2014, the National Democratic Alliance government took several measures to dilute the pro-poor provisions of the Land Acquisition Act of 2013. Though it has backed down, several questions remain over the way the Modi government has dealt with the issue of land acquisition. Santosh Verma (santosh.econ@gmail.com) is at the Council for Social Development, New Delhi. Land acquisition—by private corporations or the state—has raised vital...