-The Tribune Mumbai: Within days of polling for the Lok Sabha elections coming to an end in Maharashtra, the state government has quietly let a subsidy scheme for dairy farmers lapse. Under a scheme announced in July last year following protests by dairy farmers across the state, the Maharashtra Government announced a subsidy of Rs 5 per litre. Under a plan brokered by the central government, dairies would pay the farmers a...

-The Telegraph Call to govt to adopt 'cost-based' control The 30 per cent cap on profit margins imposed by India’s drug pricing authority on 42 anti-cancer drugs will have a limited impact on patients’ expenses because many of these medicines’ prices remain “prohibitive”, a network of patients’ rights groups said on Saturday. The All India Drug Action Network (Aidan) said the National Pharmaceutical Pricing Authority’s cap on profit margins in effect “legitimises” the...

-The Indian Express Agrarian crisis is an opportunity, for the government that assumes office after elections, to enact a law giving farmers the right to sell any quantity of their produce to anybody, anywhere and at any time. The German obsession with sound currency has been conditioned by the collective memory of the Great Hyperinflation of 1922-23, just as American intolerance to double-digit unemployment and stock market crashes is traceable to...

-The Indian Express Policy still hasn’t adjusted itself to address the crisis of agricultural produce deflation. India’s agricultural output grew by hardly 2.7 per cent during the last October-December quarter. That isn’t bad, if one takes the corresponding year-on-year increases for the preceding 10 quarters; these have ranged between 4.2 per cent and 7.5 per cent. The cause for concern is that these reasonably good production growth rates in “real” terms...

-The Hindu Business Line Despite a lively debate in recent weeks on whether food prices have now moved to being structurally low, analysts believe that this is only a transient phenomenon and food prices, on a sequential basis, have already begun to rise. Retail inflation may be at an 18-month low but prices, especially of food items, are likely to see a pick-up over the next few months with average inflation expected...