-Live Mint It turns out that some state officials were using NRHM to enrich themselves The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) was launched seven years ago with the goal of improving healthcare delivery to people in villages, especially the poor, through a generous infusion of federal funds. Local authorities were given a relatively free hand in deciding how to spend the money, with the Centre promising funds with no strings attached for...

India has decided to throw its weight behind the civil society on issues related to family planning, and articulate its rights-based approach at a summit scheduled in London in the next few weeks. India has kept away from planning family policies since the 70s, and incorporated population stabilisation programmes in the health policies focussing on sexual and reproductive health rights and women's empowerment. While the Centre has discouraged a targeted approach...

India is listed among the top five countries across the world which lose a majority of the two million children worldwide who die each year to easily preventable diseases -- pneumonia and diarrhoea – states the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report released on Friday. The report adds that nearly 90 per cent of all these deaths are due to unsafe water and poor hygiene. “Pneumonia and diarrhoea are among the...

There is a complicated relationship between abortion as such and the selective abortion of female foetuses. This dilemma is one with which the women’s movement in India has been grappling since the late 1980s. In my discussion of this dilemma, I would like to move away completely from Satyamev Jayate, the television programme, (on which a discussion has been initiated by Shohini Ghosh on kafila.org). In any case, there the...

-The Economist HOW should one judge the lot of women in India, a country that is in many ways progressive, modern, tolerant and yet by turns repressive and hostile? Women hold the highest political positions (the presidency, speaker of parliament, leader of the ruling party, leader of the opposition in parliament, several chief ministers of large states) and in theory they are protected by a variety laws promoting equality. Though development indicators...