-The Hindu Business Line Policymaking has sensibly shifted away from banning the prescription of brand names More than three months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi fired the salvo on getting doctors to prescribe medicines using their generic names, the discussion seems to be on a slow burner. From the strident position that all doctors will have to prescribe medicines using their generic or chemical names, there appears to be a more reconciled acceptance...

-Livemint.com Despite facing discrimination at every step, Kaushal Panwar managed to achieve her dreams. But she says her identity, for people around her, is still that of a Dalit. It’s like hitting a brick wall with bare fists. You could just give up, thinking you’ll make no more than a scratch. Or you could smash through one day, with the help of a chalk and a slate. When the little Dalit girl first...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's drug pricing rules allow companies to inflate the maximum retail prices of medicines, including life-saving drugs, costing patients thousands of additional rupees while offering slices of the profits to stockists, chemists, and hospitals. Quotations received by hospitals from drug companies' representatives offering discounts on maximum retail prices (MRPs) of medicines provide what some doctors and patients' rights advocates say is fresh evidence for excessive profiteering in India's...

-The Indian Express Four years after the tragedy, The Indian Express visited at least 15 disaster-hit villages and towns near Kedarnath, where a majority of the population lives under severe psychological trauma. What makes it worse is the near breakdown of the state’s mental health infrastructure. Kalimath Valley (Gaurikund): On June 12, the search for 23-year-old Prahlad Singh ended. Villagers found him tightening a rope around his neck. “He was about to...

-Hindustan Times First came demonetisation. Then, as banknotes slowly returned to circulation, a crackdown on illegal slaughterhouses in the state wrecked the local market for cattle. In Ilyas Khan’s eyes shine the pride of a grand past that give way to the clouds of an uncertain future. Two decades ago, the Thursday cattle market he runs in western Uttar Pradesh’s Banat saw traders troop in from faraway Delhi and Bihar. Today, the...