EU is pushing India and Canada to sign free trade agreements that will hurt their generic drugs—and the outrage is global After months of prevarication, the European Union has stated publicly that the free trade agreement (FTA) it signs with India will include provisions for data exclusivity because “it is extremely important for research and innovation’’. That’s what European Union ambassador Daniele Smadja told journalists in Delhi on January 21. Smadja’s...

Traversing 20 states of India the Yatra had a three point agenda: Food, Farmers, Freedom. On December 11, while the bulk of yatris were at Raj Ghat, their representatives went to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The list of demands they submitted provides a bird's eye view to the war that is now taking shape. Proponents of Kisan Swaraj want both the government and private sector to, among other things: 1. Stop treating...

Halt ongoing negotiations, says open letterWith Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set to hold talks with his counterpart in Brussels on trade and economic issues, a broad civil society alliance on Thursday called on the European Commission and India to immediately halt the ongoing negotiations for an India-EU Free Trade Agreement.The India-EU summit on Friday is likely to give a political mandate for working towards the conclusion of the FTA in...

Their ongoing negotiations remain shrouded in secrecy, but there are already reports that India and the European Union (EU) will have a free-trade agreement ready by the end of August, and that they will be putting signatures to it before the end of 2010. Yet it is a potential development that is causing more nervous chatter than joyous jitters here in India, where drug manufacturers in particular have raised concerns over...

As agriculture universities transform local varieties into genetically modified Bt brinjal, questions of ownership arise. Indians call it the brinjal. Other countries know it as the eggplant or aubergine. It is widely used the world over and every cuisine from the Chinese to the African has an encyclopaedia of recipes that establishes its popularity as a vegetable of daily use. And no vegetable has hogged the headlines as much as the...