India may have to abide by a series of international standards and regulatory practices in the healthcare sector, if it agrees to some proposals that are part of the ongoing India–EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations. For instance, EU negotiators have sought India’s commitment to adopting Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF) norms for medical devices. The move comes at a time when India and other Asian countries are trying to formulate...

EU is pushing India and Canada to sign free trade agreements that will hurt their generic drugs—and the outrage is global After months of prevarication, the European Union has stated publicly that the free trade agreement (FTA) it signs with India will include provisions for data exclusivity because “it is extremely important for research and innovation’’. That’s what European Union ambassador Daniele Smadja told journalists in Delhi on January 21. Smadja’s...

Everyone agrees that there is a food crisis. As ordinary members of the public we know there’s one every time we go out shopping for vegetables. My mother knows there’s a crisis because, after recently sacking her cook, she discovered the lady had left with all the onions in the house. The media agrees there’s one, and sends more TV crews to talk to onion farmers, even though the TV reporters...

There is a suggestion circulating in the corridors of our apex monetary regulatory authority, the Reserve Bank of India, that food inflation is beginning to look more ‘structural’ than ‘seasonal’, and it can only be tackled by addressing the supply side. We need to address both demand and supply sides simultaneously to tackle food inflation. While we must be happy that more and more poor eat fruits and cook vegetables...

The Indian government is exploring a proposal to reduce the limit on foreign direct investment (FDI) allowed in the pharmaceutical industry through the automatic route to 49% from 100% amid concerns over the takeover of local drug makers by overseas firms. Officials from the ministry of commerce and industry and the ministry of health have had multiple rounds of discussions on the proposal following a note written to them by the finance...