The World Trade Organisation's Doha round of negotiations has been at an impasse since December 2008. Several academics and opinion-makers have recently argued that the Doha round is "dead". This article discusses the US narrative on the reasons for the impasse and the way forward. It contrasts this narrative with that of the major developing country alliances in the wto and considers some underlying causes for the current impasse.

Recent decades of globalisation provide a new starting point for the study of south Asia by highlighting critical human issues that force history into the present and generate new productive conversations between history and social science. One fundamental issue is the increasing inequality in wealth and control over human resources, globally and in south Asia. Economic policy regimes in the contemporary world resemble those of laissez-faire imperalism of a century ago more than national state planning regimes that prevailed from the 1950s into the 1980s.

Trade ministers from the 21 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries hope to have a list of environmental goods for tariff liberalisation by September, officials announced after meeting in Kazan, Russia earlier this week. The two-day gathering also saw ministers address issues such as food security and trade facilitation, while continuing discussions on liberalising trade in services and information technology products in the WTO context.

The Green Revolution was India’s first industrial agricultural revolution that replaced the traditional farming system completely. But the adverse consequences of Green Revolution in the form of stagnation in production aggravated the problems of the farmers in the era of post-Green Revolution in 1980s and 1990s. The late 1990s witnessed an emergency of debt-driven suicides and rapid indebtedness that had taken hold of the countryside across the nation.

The Andhra Pradesh is one of the two states in the country to initiate democratic decentralisation process on the lines of Balawanta Rai Mehata Committee Report in 1959. The process of decentralisation in the state can be broadly divided into six phases. In every phase, the successive government, except during 1960s and 1970s where the PRIs positions were occupied by the rural upper class and upper castes, evaded the implementation of its own expert committees’ recommendations and undermined the PRIs and their leadership.

Liberalisation measures in the pharmaceutical sector have brought about major changes in the industrial licensing policy, import restrictions, foreign direct investment and production controls. It was feared that firms would shift from indigenous production to imports, especially of bulk drugs, and this concern was aggravated with the change in the patent law. This paper finds that these apprehensions have only partly come true. Exports of formulations have grown faster while their imports have not registered any jump, keeping the balance of trade positive.