-The Hindu Chennai: With U.S Trade Representative Michael Froman set to announce a trade enforcement action tied to India, the highly influential U.S Chamber of Commerce has lashed out at India's recent pattern of pharma patent denials, pointing out that the country's actions "are not about access to medicine." In the case of Swiss drug-maker Novartis, whose cancer drug's patent protections were dismissed by the Supreme Court, the chamber has argued that...
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Bitter US pill on drug patents -Jayanta Roy Chowdhury
-The Telegraph New Delhi: The US Chamber of Commerce has advised its government to ratchet up pressure on India over intellectual property rights and prevent it from producing cheap generic versions of medicines under patent protection. In a recommendation to the United States Trade Representative (USTR), the chamber requested it to label India as a Priority Foreign Country, a tag which is given to the worst offenders of patent rights. The only...
More »Defending people's milk in India
-Grain.org "We take care of the cow and the cow takes care of us," says Marayal, a farmer in Thalavady, Tamil Nadu. Her two cows produce 6 to 10 litres of milk a day, which she sells for 30-40 cents per litre. Across India, there are millions of backyard dairy farmers like Marayal. Each owning just one or two cows, these farmers supply millions more families and hundreds of thousands of informal...
More »"Aam Pravasis" demand dignity, rights for workers
-The Hindu "Make Pravasi Baratiya Divas more democratic, inclusive" Representatives of migrant, domestic worker and human rights organisations, besides trade unions, held a demonstration at Jantar Mantar here on Tuesday to demand that the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) be made more democratic, representative and inclusive. Stating that the PBD should be made a platform for discussing the problems of labour diaspora and that its agenda should include issues of migrant workers, the protestors...
More »Cereal offenders -Ila Patnaik
-The Indian Express Food inflation owes largely to agricultural markets being regulated by outdated laws. The RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan, has a difficult task this week. He has to decide whether to keep interest rates constant or raise them - bearing in mind the possible taper of the US Fed's bond buying programme, a decline in industrial production and a rise in inflation. The sharp increase in consumer price-based inflation, to more...
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