-The Hindu Business Line   Economic Survey says Parliament can pass laws to override States' powers to create such a thing The Budget has proposed the setting up of a national agriculture market. Agriculture in the country is a State subject and thus all the States have set up Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMC) to regulate the marketing of agricultural commodities. Thus, APMCs have been considered an inhibiting factor for establishment of a national...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government may negotiate prices of patented medicines with their manufacturers before allowing pharmaceutical companies to launch them in India. The move, a first of its kind, is also likely to be applied on patented drugs that are already being sold in the country, an official source said. An inter-ministerial committee, evaluating the mechanism to negotiate prices of patented medicines, has recently sought detailed information about...

-The Hindu Providing people with a modest basic income instead of subsidies would save public revenue With oil prices falling, it was perhaps a good time to fade out fuel subsidies. All subsidies are inefficient and distortionary, and most are regressive. The same could be said of costly public works schemes as well. By contrast, the debate on direct benefit transfers has moved into a more sensible phase, with the posturing criticism of...

-Deccan Chronicle Prime Minister Narendra Modi may be patting himself on the back because President Barack Obama has agreed to India's position on food stockholding norms in World Trade Organisation (WTO). However, New Delhi seems to be bending over backwards to accommodate the American government and giant multinational corporations (MNCs) in the pharmaceutical industry, which will work to the detriment of our country's interests. In less than six months, the Modi government...

-The Hindustan Times The government plans to put up coal mines for bidding by private steel, power and cement companies and introduce changes in the law to enable commercial mining in the future, signalling its intent to fully open the sector to private players. The new auction-based system will replace the earlier controversial policy of allotting coal blocks based on recommendations of a panel of bureaucrats, which the Supreme Court had struck...