Every afternoon at about four, a slight woman named Runi slips out of the cramped, airless room that she shares with her husband and their sixteen children. She skirts the drainage ditch in front of the building, then walks toward the pile of hardened dung cakes that people in this slum on the edge of the northeastern Indian city of Patna use for fuel. Dressed in a bright-yellow sari shot...
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The Real Concern by Ashok V Desai
A patent is an artificial property right; it is created by the government, and would not exist if there were no government or if it did not grant patents. It is then for the government to decide whether to grant a patent or not. But a government would not normally make the decision arbitrarily; it would follow some rules. The rules universally followed are novelty, non-obviousness and commercial value. A...
More »Vaccine crisis: Govt shut down 3 units in 2008 by Seemi Pasha
India's health industry was crippled back in 2008, when the then Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss decided to shut down three public sector vaccine units — to give contracts to a private firm. Two years back when the three public sector vaccine units were shut down, it led to a shortage of critical vaccines like BCG, DPT and Anti TB vaccines in India. CNN-IBN has accessed the probe report, which has found...
More »India may move WTO as it seeks to resolve EU dispute by CH Unnikrishnan
India may seek the setting up of a special panel within the World Trade Organization to resolve the dispute with the European Union (EU) over the seizure of generic drug exports. The commerce ministry is ready to push for this at the WTO in the next week after months-long consultations with the concerned authorities, said a ministry official familiar with the development. Commerce secretary Rahul Khullar said both sides are still talking...
More »EU trips the poor
Even as India and the European Union (EU) inch closer to threshing out a free-trade agreement, the unresolved issue of seizures by EU member countries of Indian generic drugs on their way to other destinations continues to sour relations between the two. Over a score of such incidents of unlawful confiscation of Indian drug shipments by European customs authorities have occurred in the past three years. Ironically, most of such...
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