-The Hindu Amid criticism from SC/ST panel, experts say project must continue Now in her late twenties, Veeramma Selvan of Thekkekadampara tribal hamlet in Sholayur gram panchayat of Attappady has reasons to believe that her gods have stopped smiling. It was in January last year that she lost her five-month-old, underweight son Balu — her fourth child — allegedly due to milk aspiration. (a medical condition in which the mother's milk goes...

-The Times of India Nineteen-year-old Radha Dhanewale is one of the most eligible brides in Maharashtra’s Solapur. Families of prospective grooms arrive at the family’s tiny house every day. It’s not her education, horoscope or income that puts her at the top of the list — it’s a ‘bidi card’ she holds. “I have rolled bidis with my mother since my school days. A few years ago, I got a bidi card from...

-The Hindu Inducting Licentiate Medical Practitioners may be the solution to the chronic shortage of doctors in rural areas Nearly 600 million people in India, mostly in the rural areas, have little or no access to health care. A widespread disregard for norms, a perpetual failure to reach targets, and an air of utter helplessness are what mark the state of rural health care today. One can add to this another...

-The Hindu Business Line The National Health Protection Scheme is promising but sketchy The National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), which promises to provide a cover of ?5 lakh each to 10 crore households (50 crore people, or about 40 per cent of the population), marks a big step forward to make secondary and tertiary healthcare affordable to the poor. The initiative is likely to reduce “catastrophic” out-of-pocket expenses, which are estimated to...

-The Hindu In a pre-election Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley serves up a mix of populism and prudence With a clear eye on the Lok Sabha election, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley pulled out all the stops in the Narendra Modi government’s last full Budget to promise a better deal for farmers, boost the rural economy and make the poor less vulnerable to health exigencies. Responding to the distress in the agriculture sector...