-The Hindu     The much-awaited Drug (Prices Control) Order 2013 has disappointed millions of patients, as it lacks a fair formula to fix the price ceiling and leaves important drug classes out of regulation. The result: High out-of-pocket spending on medicines will continue As far as intentions go, the Drug (Prices Control) Order 2013 is aimed at making critical drugs affordable and available to the public, while preserving a rationale for manufacture by...

-The Business Standard Food security should not be treated as a political ploy The government's rush to push through food security legislation as an ordinance, instead of waiting the few weeks till the next Parliament session, is disturbing. There continue to be several major problems with the food security scheme that deserve to be more thoroughly discussed at the highest level of law making than they have been so far. Nobody can...

-The New York Times CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - MODERN India is, in many ways, a success. Its claim to be the world's largest democracy is not hollow. Its media is vibrant and free; Indians buy more newspapers every day than any other nation. Since independence in 1947, life expectancy at birth has more than doubled, to 66 years from 32, and per-capita income (adjusted for inflation) has grown fivefold. In recent decades,...

-IPS News ROME: The growing consensus, momentum and commitment to eradicate world hunger may seem overly ambitious in view of the slow progress in reducing the number of hungry people in the world in recent decades. After all, declining food prices in the second half of the 20th century, thanks to increasing production, were not enough to eliminate poverty and hunger in the world. In the 1960s and 1970s, many governments invested a...

-Live Mint The fundamental pathology of Indian policy is the overwhelming preference for subsidies over public goods One useful way to understand a fundamental flaw in policymaking in India since 2004 is to ask a rhetorical question: why is the ruling United Progressive Alliance aggressively pushing for a law guaranteeing the right to food rather than one for the right to clean drinking water? Take a look at the numbers. A February...