-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government wants to fortify not just mid-day meals in school for children, but many other staples that Indians eat. The government, after proposing to supply fortified ready-to-eat packaged meals for children in anganwadi centres, is now mulling a plan for mass fortification of several staple food items on the lines of iodine-fortified salt. Prime Minister Modi last week heard a presentation from secretaries of the ministries...

-The Indian Express Healthcare in India is a leading cause of poverty. The medical profession must own its share of the blame Earlier this month, The Lancet published a paper calling for a radical transformation of the architecture of India’s healthcare delivery system if it is to achieve the government’s vision of assuring health for all. The paper documented India’s progress on major health indicators in the past decade, but also...

-Hindustan Times School textbooks in recent decades have frequently become battlegrounds for ideological contestation in India. Most textbook wars are to advance majoritarian perspectives on history and culture. However, a recent very different textbook skirmish broke out about the public and private sectors in healthcare. The story of this ideological clash is bemusing and instructive, illuminating competing perspectives on the nature of education, healthcare and markets in new India. This clash surfaced...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Public health activists have asked the Union health ministry to reject a demand from an association of Indian doctors to exempt hospitals and clinics with accreditation from proposed rules to regulate the costs of services charged to patients. The Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA, or People's Health Movement) has opposed a demand from the Indian Medical Association to the health ministry seeking exemption for accredited hospitals from the Clinical...

-The Hindu Business Line India must fight against its food exports being placed under USFDA scrutiny When it comes to free trade, the US is the world’s leading evangelist. However, while the US market overall remains one of the world’s most open markets in terms of access, when it comes to politically sensitive constituencies such as agriculture, the picture changes dramatically. The debate over farm subsidies, of course, is fairly well known....