-Down to Earth prime minister's statement, agreeing to implement recommendations of India-US joint working group on intellectual property, would make medicines unaffordable for millions of needy, say health activists  prime minister Narendra Modi's stand on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) became clear when he assured Barack Obama that his government is ready to follow the recommendations of the US-India joint working group. Modi made this statement on Monday while addressing the CEO Forum...

-Business Standard The Shanta Kumar Committee on restructuring FCI has suggested the reach of the National Food Security Act be curtailed to 40 per cent of the population The National Democratic Alliance government set up the high-level Shanta Kumar Committee to restructure and reform the state-owned Food Corporation of India. Instead, the panel ended up providing a road map to restructure the entire farming and food security policy of the government. In...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: International health activists have joined their Indian counterparts in decrying what they say are Barack Obama's dual policy on big drug companies, pledging to break their stranglehold in the US but promoting their interests in India. The activists claimed yesterday that the India-US joint statement, issued during Obama's visit to India, contains signals that the Indian government could be preparing to weaken its intellectual property regulations on medicines,...

-PTI Kolkata: West Bengal's Nadia district is poised to complete building toilets for all its residents by next March, under a programme which has been shortlisted for the United Nations global award for public service. Nadia district magistrate P B Salim told PTI that 95 percent of the people had already stopped defecating in the open and by this March they would achieve a 100 percent open defecation-free status. His scheme "Sobar...

-Scroll.in The model of conditional cash incentives for protecting the girl child has not fared very well in India. Over the years, there have been many initiatives across India to promote the girl child and improve its poor child sex ratio. The schemes have differed in name, but converged in their general inefficiency. Now, prime minister Narendra Modi has launched another such scheme, grandly called the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Yojana, in...