-Frontline   But in Modi's Gujarat the difference between development and darkness is all too visible to those who care to see. NARENDRA MODI may have won three consecutive elections and ruled Gujarat for more than a decade after he was posted there almost as a night watchman, to borrow a cricketing expression. He may have mobilised a massive fan following that is shouting to catapult him into the Prime Minister's post,...

-The Hindustan Times Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has aptly described the persistence of mass undernutrition in India as a "national shame". What is even more shameful, however, is the passivity of the government - and of the country - towards this humanitarian emergency. The passivity begins with a reluctance to face the facts. The first step towards more effective nutrition policies in India is regular monitoring of the nutrition status of...

-The Hindu Business Line   The general tendency among Indian policy makers currently is to blame international price movements for the rise in prices of essential food items in India. The extent to which this claim is valid is assessed by examining the specific case of wheat. It is no secret that Indian food prices are increasingly affected by international prices. Ever since 2002, when all quantitative restrictions on Indian imports of agricultural...

-The Business Standard The Novartis verdict by the Supreme Court emphasised the importance of flexibilities in drug patent laws, in contrast to Western countries which are seeking TRIPS-plus hardening through free-trade agreements As curtains on the six-year-long legal tussle with Swiss drug giant Novartis AG finally came down earlier this month, the Indian government did not waste a second in hailing the Indian patent law which it said was in "full...

-CNN-IBN Kolkata: The West Bengal chit fund is getting bigger each day. It has now turns out that ponzi schemes in the state financed not just media houses but Tollywood films as well. In the past four years, at least one in three films has been produced by groups that run ponzi schemes. Rose Valley, a deposit-taking company which is now under the MCA scanner, has produced 18 films including three National...