-Moneylife Activists have urged the CM to fill up the posts immediately as RTI applications to various state government departments remain unanswered RTI activists and citizens are perTurbed that Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan has been dilly-dallying with the appointments to the vacant posts in the state information commission, and have said that he needs to be proactive in the implementation of Right to Information (RTI) Act and address the problems that...

-Economic and Political Weekly The compulsory licence for Nexavar is only the beginning of a new battle over drug prices. The grant of a compulsory licence (CL) to Natco Pharma, a relatively small Indian pharmaceutical company, to manufacTure and sell the cancer drug sorafenib (Nexavar) has been rightly hailed as a major step forward for public health and the wider availability of life saving medicines.   The German pharmaceutical company Bayer holds the patent...

The Centre on Monday revised the wage rate under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and has decided to amend the Act to remove the existing disparity in minimum wage, even as the matter is scheduled to come up before the Supreme Court on April 9. The revision in the wage rate indexed to the Consumer Price Index for AgriculTural Labour (CPIAL) will come into effect on April 1...

-The Telegraph The Mamata Banerjee government today curtailed the financial powers of three CPM-run zilla parishads where funds disbursals have come to a standstill because of an alleged tussle to claim credit. The district magistrates of North 24-Parganas, Nadia and Murshidabad have been empowered to disburse funds. The Left had been reduced to a minority in the standing committees of the three zilla parishads after it lost power last May. State panchayat minister...

The ongoing debate over the incidence of poverty in India, often assuming surreal proportions, shows that there is indeed a ‘philosophy of poverty’ guiding current economic reforms. The loot of our country’s resources that is taking place both through these reforms, which continue to widen gross inequalities, and through the open plunder of our resources for private gain — as reflected in the series of mega scams — require the legitimacy...