-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...

-TheWire.in With no cylinders sanctioned, traditional cooking techniques are still used. The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, the flagship programme under the aegis of the Central government and promoted as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s initiative, is a much celebrated policy. It garnered praise in the WHO pollution report just last month, and a National Geographic documentary – chronicling the impact of the yojana on the lives of four women across India – is...

-BusinessToday.in New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a great orator. He also makes grand announcements about ambitious targets, leaving hapless officials and others to work out the details. And sometimes, exactly what he meant while making that announcement is not very clear to the people tasked with working out strategies and policies to achieve that target. One example is his speech during the Kisan Rally in Bareilly, UP, on 28th February...

-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...

-The Telegraph Chandigarh: The Congress government in Punjab, like the Mamata Banerjee dispensation in Bengal, has refused to implement the flagship health insurance scheme of the Centre. While the other north Indian states under BJP rule - Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir - have signed the memorandum of understanding with the Union health ministry to implement the Ayushman Bharat scheme, the Amarinder Singh government in Punjab has refused to...