Infochange India

The struggle for affordable medicines

By Chan Park 

India, which amended its patent laws for TRIPS-compliance in 2005, introduced a clause to ensure that pharmaceuticals did not block the entry of low-cost generic drugs. A year ago this clause blocked Novartis' patent application for its anti-cancer drug Gleevec. Now, in a major...

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Action plan to ease disease burden of developing world

By Arti Malik

Despite the staggeringly disproportionate impact of disease on the developing world, pharmaceuticals develop drugs that have a potentially profitable market rather than drugs that are urgently required in poorer countries. Will this change with the World Health Assembly’s recent a...

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Corporate profits or the right to life?

The EU-India free trade agreement will wipe generic, cheap, unpatented drugs out of the market, writes Aakash Mehrotra

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A dubious GIFT

By Manshi Asher and Sayantoni Datta

Gujarat International Finance Tech City (GIFT), to come up in Gandhinagar, is being promoted as India's largest multi-services financial hub. To be built mostly on common grazing lands grabbed from surrounding villages and by panicking farmers into selling thei...

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SEZs: Damp squibs?

By Rashme Sehgal

A study by the Hazards Centre shows that only 19 of an approved 366 SEZs are functional. And within many of these, the number of manufacturing units actually set up and the number of people employed is much lower than expected

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