-The Indian Express The government has failed to provide the right incentives to farmers India’s quest for self-sufficiency in pulses goes back, at least, to 1990-1991, when pulses were incorporated in the technology mission on oilseeds. In 1992, and 1995-1996, oil palm and maize were added to the mission, which was re-christened the Integrated Scheme on Oilseeds, Pulses, Oil palm and Maize (ISOPOM). In 2007, ISOPOM’s pulses component was merged with...

-PTI New Delhi: India was given the 143rd spot in 188 countries by a global health study, that released on Friday. The study cited various challenges, including mortality rates, malaria hygiene and air pollution for India’s abysmal ranking. “Despite rapid economic growth, India was ranked 143rd, below Comoros and Ghana,” the FIRst annual assessment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) health performance published in the Lancet and launched at a special event at the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court has asked the Centre to examine a doctor's claim that India's "unscientific" tuberculosis protocol stipulates an inadequate medicine regime to cut costs, thus promoting relapses and generating lethal drug-resistant strains. The court did not issue a formal notice to the government but asked additional solicitor-general Maninder Singh to talk to the petitioner, Raman Kakar, and get back to the court. Kakar has argued that the current...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Prices of around 100 medicines, including those for Alzheimer's, diabetes and hypertension, could rise by up to 10% after they were removed from the national list of essential medicines. Though the move is likely to impact consumers, it comes as a relief to drug makers reeling under stringent price regulation for over a year. Overruling a previous order by the drug price regulator, the Centre has...

-The Hindu The sense of impunity that drives discrimination against Dalits is at the heart of recent demands for the dilution, or even repeal, of the Act for prevention of atrocities against SCs and STs It is the sense of impunity nurtured by caste hierarchy that prepares the social ground for the “shockingly cruel and inhumane” crimes against Dalits called atrocities. It is this impunity that the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled...