-The Times of India Faced with a looming embarrassment over the disclosure of irregularities in the allocation of coal blocks, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday sought to play down the findings of the auditor, asserting that his final report would spare the government. Speaking against the backdrop of Opposition's criticism and its demand for a CBI probe into what is being called " Coalgate", Mukherjee said that that the report scooped...

India's decision this month to produce Germany-based multinational Bayer's anti-cancer drug Nexavar, in the first use of "compulsory licensing" in South Asia, will save lives but also raises intricate questions. Under the compulsory licensing process, a government can under World Trade Organization (WTO) rules bypass a patent owner's rights after three years and order the manufacture and sale of life-saving medicines at much cheaper cost than by obtaining the medicine from...

India's use of the compulsory licensing provision under its patents law for the first time to make the patented cancer drug Nexavar available at affordable prices is an essential, although belated step to curb the mounting cost of drugs. The grant of the licence by the Controller-General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks to Natco Pharma for manufacture of the drug Sorafenib Tosylate (Nexavar) to treat liver and kidney cancer is...

-The Hindu   Dr. Manmohan Singh Prime Minister of India March 12, 2012 Dear Prime Minister, We welcome the tabling of a National Food Security Bill in the Lok Sabha as an important step towards the elimination of hunger and undernutrition in India. However, we feel that the Bill in its current form has some serious shortcomings. We are writing to propose a simpler and more effective framework for the Public Distribution System (PDS), which requires...

Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...