-The Indian Express A waiver on IP protections would mean pharmaceutical firms and vaccine makers across the world can learn how to make these vaccines without fear of lawsuits from companies that originally developed them. In a move that could potentially help increase production of Covid-19 vaccines around the world, the United States on Wednesday announced its support for waiving intellectual property (IP) protections for these vaccines. Subsequently, the European Union (EU) agreed...

-The Hindu Over the last few decades, intellectual property rules have served as a lethal barrier to the right to access healthcare Even an unprecedented pandemic can do little, it appears, to upset the existing global regime governing monopoly rights over the production and distribution of life-saving drugs. If anything, since the onset of COVID-19, we’ve only seen a reaffirmation of intellectual property rules that have served as a lethal barrier to...

Although services provided by the gig and platform workers touch the lives of each one of us, we have little knowledge about the role of digital labour platforms in transforming the world of work. Such digital labour platforms have created unprecedented opportunities for workers, businesses and society. However, they also pose serious threats to decent work and fair competition. A recent report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) shows that the...

-The Tribune The economic argument in support of market reforms, claiming that farm incomes go up when the number of farmers recedes, has turned out to be untrue. America has lost more than 5 million farms in less than 100 years, and Australia 25 per cent of its farms between 1980 and 2002. The speed at which farmers across the globe have got out of agriculture hasn’t increased farm incomes, but...

Quite often it is argued by mainstream economists that a sizeable chunk of the Union Budget every year is wasted because the Government spends that on food and fertiliser subsidies. The burgeoning size of these two subsidies relative to the entire budget as well as the gross domestic product (GDP) is often used to build the argument that economic as well as environmental sustainability of the country is at stake...