The government is thinking of letting the states cherry pick the central schemes for rural welfare, a step back from centralized decision-making that it hopes could help quell the accusations that Centre was weakening the federal structure. The idea behind the 'flexifund route' is to allow states the freedom to decide rural development schemes they want to implement and how much of allocation should each get. It would mark a departure...

MGNREGA can only succeed if politics is taken seriously in the design of accountability mechanisms Does political competition enhance a poor person’s access to anti-poverty initiatives such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA)? Just as some economists believe that competition is an effective way to improve management and productivity, in politics too, some hold that political competition is better than single-party monopoly, because it forces political parties...

-The Economist West Bengal’s populist chief minister is doing badly. Yet she typifies shifts in power in India BUYER’S remorse is common enough in the dusty markets of Kolkata, a delightful if crumbling great city, once known as Calcutta and still capital of the state of West Bengal. Those who buy cheap plastic goods or plaster-of-Paris busts of Rabindranath Tagore, Bengal’s cultural hero, may come to regret their haste. Likewise, many who...

India's efforts to produce and supply life-saving drugs at affordable prices face challenges from multinational companies trying to “evergreen” their patents. THE average life expectancy across the globe has increased from around 30 years a century ago to over 65 years today. This has been made possible in large part by modern medicine. Never before in history have humans had access to such an array of medicines and devices to...

NOVARTIS has long been suing the Government of India to eliminate or weaken Section 3(d) of the Patents (Amendment) Act, 2005, which established strict standards of patentability in order to prevent the ever-greening of patent monopolies on medicines. Although Novartis lost in 2007 its initial efforts to have Section 3(d) declared unconstitutional and violative of international norms for national patent regimes, it has persisted in appealing and re-appealing the denial...