-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The government wants to send people who pay BRIbes to jail. But, it has refused to make a distinction between people who collude with officials and those who are coerced into paying up. This means people such as Sumita, too, can be jailed. Sumita lost her 10-month-old son on August 9 in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich hospital when the child did not get an injection. The staff delayed the injection...

-PTI Major rivers are flowing above danger mark; NDRF teams sent to Varanasi, Allahabad and Ghazipur Ten persons were killed and lakhs affected due to floods in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, where major rivers are flowing above danger mark on Wednesday. Two boys were feared dead after they were washed away in flash floods in the Tawi river in Jammu on Wednesday. In Uttar Pradesh, two persons were killed in floods...

-The Indian Express Farm incomes may not revive despite good monsoon. There are new challenges for policymakers. India’s per capita calorie demand has been falling for at least the last 30 years. Most people do a double-take when they hear that. One can’t debate the fact much: National Sample Surveys every five to seven years have documented this. What we can debate are the reasons behind this: In their 2009 paper Angus...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Taking action against corrupt officials could soon get harder. A parliamentary panel has backed a move to bar anti-graft agencies from probing BRIbery allegations against public servants without the government’s approval. The government can take up to four months to decide if the police should register the BRIbery case, and there will be no penalty if it takes longer. However, its sanction would not be required if the official...

-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...