The Policy Monitor
The IPR waiver would allow all countries to choose to neither grant nor enforce patents and other IPRs related to COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics and other technologies for the duration of the pandemic until global herd immunity is achieved. This move harkens back 20 years to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when affordable generic HIV drugs, made in countries where patents did not block production, began saving millions of people’s lives.
As our country is at crossroads today, more than the pandemic it is an unequal socio-economic structure which has accelerated the problems of the pandemic
Democracies need to evolve both to cater to the needs of citizens and meet demands of the new generations. In this regard, India has been debating over the issue of Proportional Representation (PR) versus First – Past – The – Post (FPTP) for decades.
Though I am sceptic regarding the path of recovery, whether it would be V, W or K-shaped, but if this way of dealing the situation continues, my vote goes for the letter O
‘basic’ should be interpreted as those significant cognitive and psycho-social skills that are necessary to interact with and interpret the world.
The challenge in India is to deliver a high volume of quality medical services at affordable low costs requiring breakthrough in healthcare delivery.
India’s institutional policy has to complement its industrial policy and not the other way round
Unpaid work is not valued due to its excess supply
The escape from COVID and the return to normalcy still remains a contentious issue debated by a plethora of health experts and economists, but what seems clear is that the right to internet is inextricably linked to the right to education and right to health in these trying times
Any enforcement of mutual exchange becomes exploitative even within free markets if over-riding socio-economic inequalities are ignored and institutions are imposed from the top.