EU threat to farmers

Testing the CL route

Last month I ran into Ecuador’s popular president Rafael Correa as he was campaigning for a third term—he has since been re-elected with a record majority—and recalled his path-breaking decision to issue compulsory licences (CLs) to ensure cheaper medicines for his expanding public health programme. The decree, the first such in Latin America, was issued in October 2009 for some much-needed drugs and, six months later, the Ecuadorian government handed out the first CL on US multinational Abbott’s ritonavir, an AIDS medication.

Menacing US diplomacy

There is something that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has in common with US diplomats—or at least the intellectual property (IP) attachés posted at various diplomatic missions: a dislike of NGOs.

Big tobacco blows new smoke rings

THE World Trade Organization (WTO) appears to be the last refuge of Big Tobacco. Losing their case filed in the Australian High Court against the country’s order that all cigarettes should be sold in plain packaging, that is, devoid of distinctive and colourful branding from December, the industry seems to have shifted its arena to the WTO.

Looming threat of a secretive trade pact

When American policymakers complain repeatedly to their government that they are being kept out of the loop on a major trade agreement that’s under negotiation then you know something serious is afoot.

Sunshine sector loses sheen

The NATCO CL fallout

No medicine can be cheap enough when one is fighting fatal diseases, specially the emperor of maladies. So there was much to shout about when Patent Controller P H Kurian granted Natco Pharma of Hyderabad a compulsory licence (CL) last month to make a generic version of Bayer Corporation’s sorefanib tosylate.

Investment terror

The New Year may not have started cheerily for the claims brigade. An international arbitration panel awarded US oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp just $908 million in compensation for Venezuela’s nationalisation of its assets in 2007, less than 10 per cent of what the behemoth had reportedly sought. It was presumed that Venezuela’s feisty president Hugo Chavez, known for his America-baiting, would be celebrating.

Don't need subsidies, give us the right price

For most Indians, Mahendra Singh Tikait is the man who brought Delhi to its knees in 1988 with a rally that brought the national capital face to face with the agrarian reality. While others who relied on his support went on to positions like cabinet minsters and opted for comfortable alliances with agribusiness companies, Tikait remained a farmer leader. In a three-hour interview, he spoke of India's agrarian crisis and its underlying causes.

Long yarn

Unlike the affluent western Maharashtra, represented by successful farmer-politicians like Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, which gets plenty of facilities by way of irrigation and credit, Vidarbha gets practically nothing (see graph: Tale of two regions), despite the fact that Vidarbha has harsher conditions mainly low soil fertility and less rain.