Cipla Embraces Gilead and a New Era as Priorities Change Divya Rajagopal Mumbai:   Once a steadfast backer of generics, co now enters into a deal to make Hepatitis drug for MNC ruary last year Hamied had said  In an interview to ET in 2013, YK Hamied, the founder chairm an of Cipla, and some say the scourge of multinational drug companies, prophesied that the Indian drug industry will witness a sea change around the year 2020.“The momentum of 1972 to 1995 (pre-patent era) can't stop . It will last till 2015, but not after that. So to protect myself for 2020 I have to make radical changes.“ On Monday , the world got a glimpse of the kind of change that Hamied had in mind when Cipla teamed up with California-based Gilead Lifesciences to make and sell its path-breaking Hepatitis C drug Sofosbuvir under voluntary licence. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with this kind of a deal.Pharma companies ink many such pacts on a regular basis. But what...

 R N Bhaskar The BSE Sensex climbed to 27,211 Monday. It was around 23,171 the same time last year. Marketmen were quick in predicting that it would cross 30,000 before the next Union Budget to be announced in March 2015. The Nifty too climbed to an all time high of 8115 a day before. Market pundits reel off several reasons. The most important is that the markets still believe that good days are just round the corner (”Achchhe din aane wale hain”). They also point to the revival in GDP growth rates, the clear indications of a rise in the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and the monsoon not turning out to be as bad as was earlier expected. But talk to economists and they believe that the inflow of money into the stock markets could have a lot to do with hot money. They believe that the pact that 47 countries signed in May this year could be the most important factor spurring the inflow of foreign funds into this country. It may be recalled that thanks...

The Importance of Doing Nothing by   Manfred Kets De Vries By giving the brain 'downtime' we can improve mental health and allow ideas to incubate. “Learning without reflection is a waste, reflection without learning is dangerous” - Confucius In today’s networked society we are at risk of becoming victims of information overload. Introspection and reflection have become lost arts as the temptation to ‘just finish this’ or ‘find out that’ is often too great to resist . But working harder is not necessarily working smarter . In fact slacking off and setting aside regular periods of ‘doing nothing’ may be the best thing we can do to induce states of mind that nurture our imagination and improve our mental health. Busyness vs productive occupation Our lives have become defined by busyness. Look around you at the train station, in cafes, out on the street, people are glued to their mobile handset or tablet. But doing nothing has never really been accept...

Psychological Issues at Mid-Career by   Herminia Ibarra The real questions concern not what job but what kind of life we want next H arris felt stuck. At age 39, he’d had a successful career as a regulatory affairs expert. Although at the top of his function in a celebrated biotech firm, something was missing. He yearned to run a business, to manage a profit and loss. He wanted challenge; he could do his job in his sleep. His mentor asked him (again) to be patient. His wife, at home with two young children, cautioned him against leaving for a risky start-up; he was the breadwinner after all. For him, it was now or never. In the interim, he was working night and day on a new drug introduction without a clear idea of what to do next.   Susan’s job as the head of the change management practice of a leading consulting firm fell short on two important counts: she wanted more meaningful work and a better work-life balance, with more control over her tra...

Aspiring For Equality Gautam Adhikari So, was Karl Marx right? Is capitalism doomed to failure because of unsustainable, ingrained contra dictions? Or did Marx misread the future? It’s a debate that has flickered back to life in thinking circles in the US and Europe.     Two sparks have ignited it. One is a mushrooming of studies that show a rapid widening of economic inequality in major economies of the West and in emerging markets like India, Brazil and China. In Asia, 12 economies, which account for 80% of the population of the region’s developing economies, have seen inequality rise steeply in the last decade. A Pew survey of pre-poll public opinion said 70% of Indians were highly dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country. Their chief worries: corruption, inflation and, importantly, inequality.     The other spark is the release of a book, Capital In The Twenty-First Century, by French economist Thomas Piketty, a p...

Aam Admi Party (AAP) has shown that in India, now, Elections can be fought and won by Aam Janta without use of Power, Money, Caste, and Religion or vote bank politics. Not only can they be fought and won but they can also have the mandate to govern. You don’t have to be an Octogenarian to be a minister or a PM in waiting. Even a 25 year young ‘Chhori’ can be a Minister. AAP has members who are well educated, from the top strata of society be it Bureaucrats, Doctors, Investment Bankers or NRIs. They have sacrificed their legitimately earned   ,000’s to be in service of the society. We hope that after sacrificing their ‘legit’ ,000’s they will not be in the race to chase the ‘ill- legit‘,0000000’s. India is a land or Millions of Gods and Goddesses. We live in Kal Yug waiting for a “ Avatar” to come and Relive us of our misery; be it Raja Maharajas, Gandhi – Nehru followed by Gandhi or a Na MO. Is the rise of AAP a sign that India has matured? Is it pushing away from t...

Technology Creates History and Geopolitics What came first Chicken or Egg…. A difficult question to answer, what is easy to answer according to me, It is Technology which came first and then Technology dictated the course of Geopolitics and History. Let me explain with examples from Modern History. Industrial age: Industrial age arrived in early nineteenth century. Use of Coal and subsequently Crude Oil lead us to an era of Industrialization especially in Europe. To have control over the raw material used by the industry and also control the markets where the finished goods of the industries were sold, the Industrial countries of Europe Colonized the world. The Geopolitics of Colonization and the subsequent History was the creation of Industrialization. Jet age : With the rise of the Berlin wall in 1944, the world was divided into two. The bipolar world was dominated by the Capitalist and the communist, by NATO and WARSAW, by USA and USSR. This dominance was ...