Business
Continuing Troubles with the Indian Patent Act: Is Novartis On Drugs?
The Hindu has an exceptional article on the recent Novartis case in India, titled “Do Indian Patent Laws Stifle Research?” that reveals the true story behind Novartis’ failure to secure a patent for its cancer drug, Gleevec. As it turns out, Novartis took a gamble by applying for the patent not in 1993 – when [...]
India Spending Big Time on Wheat and War Planes: Role of Govt
India has floated two major tenders that have everybody drooling. The first, is for 530,000 tons of wheat, announced a week ago. Imports by India, along with Japan and Taiwan have pushed wheat prices to record highs on the Chicago Board of Trade (see chart). This import of wheat is ironic, for just a year [...]
Microfinance Misses its Mark
In a comprehensive article on the reputed Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), Aneel Karnani debunks all the hoopla surrounding microfinance. His conclusion is clear – “microfinance doesn’t cure poverty.”
The Business of Poverty: How Low-Income Credit is Dangerous
BusinessWeek recently ran a cover story on The Poverty Business: Inside U.S. companies audacious drive to extract more profit from the nation’s working poor. This is not a publication that has said much against microfinance, yet if a case had to be made against our unbridled enthusiasm for it, the lead story would serve very [...]
US Supreme Court Ruling on Patents has International Implications
The Economist reported earlier this month (Patently Obvious – May 5th issue), that the US Supreme Court had raised the bar on what deserves a patent, and qualifies as “non-obvious”. In a patent dispute ruling it stated that, “granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress.” [...]
McKinsey on Rural Mobile Payments
The McKinsey Quarterly is carrying an article on mobile SMS payments in China and how banks can use this as an excellent opportunity to bring the rural population into the financial mainstream: Recognizing the need for a new rural payments system, in August 2006 the People’s Bank of China directed domestic banks to devise a solution. [...]
Economics and Ethics: What they don’t say about Adam Smith
While doing some research, I came across this interesting article (PDF) by Peter Ulrich, professor of business ethics at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland (the premier university for business and management studies in Switzerland). Written as a conversation with Adam Smith, the article brings out fabulously some of the problems with our current thinking [...]
India’s Capital Markets: Deutsche Bank releases paper
Another bank, another paper. Deutsche Bank Research has released a 16 page report on India’s capital markets. It has a lot of numbers from a lot of places, and may not interest everyone. But it presents some interesting observations on India’s growth and development. Credit growth has surged at 35% year on year in 2004-05, [...]
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