-Livemint.com It is important to give preference to those approaches that help the poor the most for every rupee spent, no matter how they are labelled Sometimes in life, it is clear that the direct approach isn’t the best one. This is true in many areas, even when it comes to policymaking. Take, as an example, the area of extreme poverty. It seems logical, at first, that the most effective response should...

-Civil Society News New Delhi: In 1974, Dr Samir Chaudhuri, a paediatrician working in Kolkata’s slums, founded Child in Need Institute (CINI) to tackle the many dimensions of child malnutrition. It struck him at the time that malnutrition wasn’t just a clinical problem but a complex phenomenon rooted in gender issues. Over the years, led by Dr Chaudhuri, CINI developed deep understanding of the social, economic and political underpinnings of malnutrition...

-Down to Earth Now, government has promised ‘world’s largest health scheme’ whose implementation is not possible, at least in 2018. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) used the phrase ‘quality health for all’ in its manifesto when Narendra Modi was pushing for his prime ministerial candidature in 2014. It gave hope to many who were campaigning for robust healthcare system in India. However, with the government completing four years...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The poor mental health of many inmates of child rehabilitation institutions in Delhi has always been known. But it is only now that there are actual figures to show the extent of a brewing crisis as the children grow older. The data has been collated by the psychiatry department of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, based on its assessment of 414 children living in...

-The Hindu An estimated 10 million people in nine districts of West Bengal drink arsenic-laden groundwater. Priyanka Pulla finds that despite alarms having been sounded over decades, the State government has moved at a glacial pace to tackle the crisis, while people struggle to cope with the symptoms On a Thursday morning at the government primary school in Madhusudankati, a village in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, a gaggle of five-year-olds...