-Live Mint   Strong political commitment is needed to build a system of universal health coverage and better regulations   Life expectancy in India has more than doubled since independence, to 65 years, from just 32 in 1950. The infant mortality rate has been cut by two-thirds since 1971. Smallpox and guinea worm have been eradicated, the spread of HIV/AIDS has been contained, and the World Health Organization has declared India polio-free.   Yet for all...

-The Hindu   No one can attack India's well-founded Intellectual Property regime as being weak merely because a drug that is claimed to be an invention fails the test of law India and its intellectual property (IP) laws have been the subject of sharp criticism recently. Now, there is talk of the government invoking emergency provisions with regard to Dasatinib, a cancer drug. The decibel level may go up several notches. Let us look...

-The Times of India   Prem Das Rai, an MP from Sikkim, knew that development indicators from his state were exceptional. But his office didn't know how to showcase them. He reached out to Swaniti, a Delhi-based not-for-profit organization that has been working "consulting style" with parliamentarians. Their portal called Jigyasa aims to answer questions like Rai's. Rwitwika Bhattacharya, Swaniti's founder-CEO, was surprised at what they uncovered. "I always thought that the...

-The United Nations   Despite a narrowing disparity in access to cleaner water and better sanitation between rural and urban areas, sharp inequalities still persist around the world, says a new United Nations report. According to the 2014 Joint Monitoring Report on global progress against the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on water and sanitation, more than half of the global population lives in cities, and urban areas are still better supplied with improved...

-The Hindu   Development is as much a process of providing services as of removing obstacles and giving freedom from all sorts of discrimination. In what is perhaps one of India's most communal, polarising, divisive and personalised election campaigns, we are told far too often that this election is really about development. Yet, none of the political parties clearly defines development either in their speeches or in their manifestoes. So, what do they...