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If the primary purpose of the World Trade Organization is “to open trade for the benefit of all,” it may be time for WTO to revisit its agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS) to do away with patents on Covid vaccines as well as drugs to hopefully save millions of lives across the world. The global vaccine market this year could be closer to $28 billion. The market size of Covid medicines — mostly unproven and hospital-administered — is several times bigger. IPR contributes a substantial portion of Covid vaccine and drug prices. India is among several WTO members, especially those from the lower- and middle-income group, to demand patent waiver for vaccines.

New Delhi: As Tokyo Olympics nears the Women's hockey team's training programme is getting more intense and focused.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer would not have imagined that he would eventually become the victim of the trickery which he has spun to defame and smear the image of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.

India is overwhelmed now. The second wave of pandemic has shattered its expectation to resume a normal life in 2021. The loss of lives, the crumbling health infrastructures along with the massive COVID spread in rural India and nascent stage of vaccination are adding up its despair. Future seems very unpredictable and blurred. Amidst of these glooms and dooms the question is looming large as what economic shocks are waiting for India in coming months and how to sail through it. The situation may not turn out as bad as it is perceived at this hour of great crisis.

When the brother of Suvendu Adhikary, the newly-chosen leader of opposition (BJP) in the 17th West Bengal Legislative Assembly was chased by women with broom sticks, lathis and non-fire arms on the second phase of polling, central forces, polling personnel and people around were taken aback by the spontaneous nature of outburst. They seemed enraged at the switchover of the Adhikaris to the RSS-BJP camp and their sudden positioning against every thing that Mamata did for women.

While the second wave of COVID-19 has severely been impacting business and industries, the social security for workforce in the country is becoming more complex. Neither the employers nor the government seem to have the ability and capacity to protect job losses. In this scenario social security for workforce is becoming a casualty due to the enormity of the task on the one hand and lack of willingness of the government on the other.

On October 2, 2020, even before any vaccines against Covid-19 had been approved, India and South Africa had proposed to the WTO that a temporary patent waiver should be granted on all such innovations. In the following months, 100 countries had supported this demand. And on May 5, the US, usually the most ardent defender of the patent system, agreed to a temporary patent waiver on anti-Covid vaccines, committing itself to “text-based negotiations at the WTO”.

Proving exit poll-wallahs and corporate-backed psephologists, most of whom predicted that the saffron animal was breathing down the neck of Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, shamefully wrong, the intrepid 65-year old rose like a one-woman army to have slapped the message of ‘No pasaran’ on the face of Hindutva-brand fascist offensive of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Bharatiya Janata Party. She braved the money-powered, media-grabber and wanton-misuse of state machinery, let alone the ‘dishonest studio arithmetic’ (coined by the late Raman Swamy after the absolute majority achieved by the Bahujan Samaj Party in the UP state assembly election nearly two decades back)of media-hyped psephologists whose credibility is under a big question mark.

The options are not many. The dark bottomless abyss stares at us. There could be either Covid 19 or starvation. Perhaps it could be both. Resembles the torture chamber of World War II when six crore, inclusive of children and seniors, perished under the wheels of fascism. Today, even in worst estimates, India could suffer the world’s biggest aggression of the pandemic adding 357,229 new cases, just three days back, taking its total outbreak past twenty million infections and overall death toll to 222, 408, as closely as merely two days back and now, within forty eight hours, it has gone up to 230,168. Now by May 6, it has gone up, 3927 deaths have been registered with 150per hour. As experts observe, this number could be doubled in the coming weeks. The third wave would be more ominous. The death toll could be more than double.

Mamata Banerjee’s political victory in the West Bengal elections is remarkably impressive. Here was a chief minister (CM) who successfully defied two-term anti-incumbency — and while there have been other CMs who have successfully returned to power for a third time (Narendra Modi is a prime example), Banerjee was facing the most formidable challenger in India’s political theatre.