-TheWire Science * The Indian government has consistently discouraged compulsory licenses on generic drugs.   * One of the big questions the India government has not answered is why it isn’t using pharma PSUs to produce drugs and vaccines. * Not one member of Indian industry is willing to stand up and fight for compulsory licenses, and for patients, says lawyer Murali Neelakantan. India has played a crucial role in supporting South Africa, as a...

-TheWire.in R. Ramakumar, a professor at the School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, has said the Narendra Modi government simply can’t meet its target of vaccinating every adult by the end of the year. According to him, this is both because the supply of vaccines will be nowhere near sufficient and, second, because the vaccination rate can’t rise to the level required to meet the target. He listed eight...

-Newslaundry.com A June 14 report in the newspaper about an Indian government agency freezing the accounts of three of Adani Group’s foreign investors had sent its shares tumbling. On June 14, the Economic Times reported that the National Securities Depository Ltd, a government entity which holds securities, had frozen the accounts of three foreign investment funds – Albula, Cresta, APMS – which together own shares of Rs 43,500 crore in four Adani...

The pandemic's first wave had a devastating impact on the livelihoods of rural workers in Bihar (including the self-employed) last year, according to a survey based research, jointly done by economists from Centre for Development Economics and Sustainability at Monash University, Australia and the New Delhi-based Institute for Human Development. A recent press note issued by the authors of the study shows that almost 94.4 percent of the households participating...

-Scroll.in The pandemic has starkly revealed that India has failed to provide even basic health-care to the majority of its citizens. As the gravest health emergency to overwhelm the globe in a century continues to rage, the unbridled Covid-19 virus has laid bare the abject failure of India’s health system to secure even elementary levels of health-care for its people. Everything fell short disastrously, sometimes catastrophically: hospital beds, doctors, nurses, testing kits, medical...