-The Hindu MSF Secretary General Jerome Oberreit on the increasing threat to affordable health care worldwide. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors without Borders, the international humanitarian medical aid organisation that is active in 69 countries, serves populations affected by epidemics, armed conflicts, natural calamities and manmade disasters. MSF has relied heavily on generic drugs, much of which has been sourced from India, to deliver health care to some of the most...

-The Hindu NABARD to manage Rs. 77,000-cr. corpus for scheme. India’s apex rural-development bank will manage a Rs. 77,000-crore corpus as part of a Central government push to complete 99 unfinished irrigation projects across the country by 2019, and bring water to 76.03 lakh hectares. The contours of the scheme were first made public by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech this February and involve finishing 149 projects overdue since...

-The Indian Express Farmers can install solar panels on their fields that can generate income in addition to regular crop agriculture. Of its several new initiatives, the Narendra Modi government has set out at least two very ambitious targets, which are also quantifiable. One is achieving 100 giga-watts (GW) of solar power generation capacity by the year 2022. The other is doubling farmers’ income — presumably in real terms — also by 2022,...

-The Hindu Sahul Hameed says rotating houses could be built using the same technology. Ramanathapuram (Tamil Nadu): M. Sahul Hameed (65) drew the ire of his family and mocked at by many as mentally imbalanced, but he stood steadfast in giving shape to his Innovation, a ‘moving type house’, using ‘raft foundation’ technology. A class V dropout, Mr. Hameed of Melapudukkudi near Thirupullani worked in a construction company in Saudi Arabia for more...

-Frontline Medecins Sans Frontieres warns that the free or regional trade agreements that are being negotiated, which seek to strengthen current patent regimes, are a potential threat to the developing world’s access to life-saving drugs, which it sources mostly from India. WHEN NELSON MANDELA’S GOVERNMENT passed the Medicines and Related Substances Control Act in 1997 to make medicines more accessible to the poor, 39 big pharmaceutical companies filed law suits in...