A cure for India’s health care ills is within reach provided there is political will In most developed — and many developing — countries today, a 12-year school education and universal health coverage (UHC) are the two primary responsibilities of the state. India has failed miserably on both counts. Let us look at some of the problems of medical and health care: • Fifty years ago, when there was no commercialisation of...

-The Hindu Journalists need to adopt a set of integrity measures in order to police the boundaries between the market and political power   Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person and the world’s wealthiest woman, is seeking three board seats following her purchase of 18.7 per cent of Fairfax which owns most papers in Australia not controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd. There has already been considerable upheaval in two of the Fairfax papers...

-Inclusion.in There is good news. And there’s bad news. The good news first. There’s been a bumper wheat crop and the granaries are overflowing. And the bad news? Where do we begin? A lot of that grain will rot. Millions will still remain hungry. Heavily in debt and distressed, farmers are committing suicide. Food prices are soaring. There’s more… Farmers don’t have money. Their land is too small and isn’t yielding much. Fertilisers and...

-The Hindustan Times A US court has ruled that neither Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) nor its former chairman Warren Anderson were liable for environmental remediation (reversing or stopping environmental damage) or pollution-related claims by those living around its now-defunct plant in Bhopal, where a gas leak in 1984 killed thousands of people. US district judge John Keenan in Manhattan on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Bhopal residents seeking to hold UCC, which...

-The Hindu An odd job that was going to earn her some extra money happened to turn 23-year-old Aarthi Jaiswal into a voice for her neighbourhood in Jahangirpuri here. A few months ago she and a group of her friends were hired for Rs.150 per day to conduct a house-to-house survey asking for people’s opinion on the Delhi Government’s proposal to replace the public distribution system with direct cash transfers into...