-The Hindu Business Line   The general tendency among Indian policy makers currently is to blame international price movements for the rise in prices of essential food items in India. The extent to which this claim is valid is assessed by examining the specific case of wheat. It is no secret that Indian food prices are increasingly affected by international prices. Ever since 2002, when all quantitative restrictions on Indian imports of agricultural...

-The Hindu Business Line From maker of versions of drugs, India's pharmaceutical industry has turned a top innovator Twenty years ago, Ranbaxy was a home-spun drug-maker. The Indian Patents Act allowed companies to make chemically-similar versions of innovative drugs. Visionaries in the pharmaceutical sector, like Parvinder Singh (Ranbaxy's key architect and member of its promoter family) and Anji Reddy (founder of Dr Reddy's Laboratories), were alive. And the pharmaceutical industry did not have...

-The Hindu     They say Supreme Court-appointed panel's recommendations reasonable Even as the final report of the Supreme Court-appointed Technical Expert Committee (TEC) on open field trials of genetically modified crops is awaited, 51 independent international scientists with expertise in genetic engineering and biosafety protocols have approved the panel's Interim Report. The report has called for a 10-year moratorium on open field trials of Bt food crops until adequate regulatory mechanisms and safety...

-The Times of India Rains could bring some relief to the UPA in the pre-election year with the meteorological department on Friday projecting a countrywide normal monsoon for 2013. The forecast should allay government's fears of food inflation jumping again over the 10% mark after being only partially tamed in the last quarter of the financial year. The weather office said that rainfall would be within the normal range - 98% of...

-The Hindu Hyderabad: Sixteen MPs of Opposition parties, have appealed to the Centre to withdraw the Biotechnology Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill in view of the flaws it had. The MPs pointed to the inherent conflict of interest in the Bill in that it was introduced in Parliament by the Union Ministry of Science and Technology which is also promoting GM crops. The provisions showed limited public participation, no transparency, lack...