-The Hindu Business Line The Ayushman Bharat programme must aim to reverse poverty caused by healthcare expenses The state of India’s healthcare system is somewhat dichotomous — the country is a global supplier of life-saving, affordable and good quality generic medicines, yet lakhs of families are driven into poverty because they are forced to spend much of their earnings and savings on medications to treat chronic and life-threatening diseases. The poor, particularly,...

-The Hindu Why measuring inequality is not the same as measuring changes in the level of poverty in India In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion on increasing inequality within several countries of the world, including India, particularly after the publication of Thomas Piketty’s book on inequality. It is true that rising inequality has adverse economic and social consequences. The Gini coefficient or other measures of inequality are being...

-The Hindu Neither the Budget nor the National Health Policy 2017 shows a clear health sector road map The National Health Protection Scheme announced in this year’s Budget has generated a lot of debate. The government has committed itself to “providing coverage up to ?5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation” for 10 crore poor families, with approximately 50 crore people as beneficiaries. As only ?2,000 crore...

-The Financial Express The NSSO 70th round survey estimates there are 156 million rural households in India, of which 57.8% are agricultural. Average monthly expenditure on crop production by cultivating agricultural households during July 2012-June 2013 was Rs 2,192. Of this, 24% is spent on fertiliser and manure. Using survey results, rough calculations suggest agricultural households’ spend on fertiliser/manure would be in the range of Rs 78,000-1,20,000 crore in next cropping...

-Livemint.com Union Budget 2018 may be able to offer sops for big farmers but it would not be able to deal with the structural challenges facing India’s rural economy The results of the Gujarat elections, in which the opposition Congress outperformed the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in rural constituencies, and the growing number of farmer agitations in the country have focused attention on rural India ahead of this year’s budget. But...