-The Business Standard   The food security ordinance would empower poor urban migrants to challenge denial of ration cards The new Food Security Ordinance provides virtually nothing and yet quite a lot. What it provides is food as a legal right. And that means a lot for a poor migrant in a city chawl, with no local address proof, having left all identity cards back in their native village and unable to claim anything...

-The Business Standard Not so efficiently or transparently but there is progress and hope, besides showcasing likely problems with the Centre's own law Mahasamund (Chhattisgarh): The UPA government at the Centre has been mulling hard on ways to enact its Food Security Bill, even as the Chhattisgarh government has completed six months of enacting a like law, one providing 35 kg of rice a month at Rs 2 a kg to all...

-The Hindu Business Line     Technology has improved the poor's access to healthcare. India grapples with the issue of a major divide between the well-to-do and the lower end of the population strata. The challenge of uplifting the ‘below the poverty line' section of the population remains a challenging task. One of the areas which ranks high on this priority list is access to healthcare facilities. As is well known, events related to emergency...

-The Hindu Chhattisgarh is all set to allow private diagnostic centres at public health facilities within three months. Critics are appalled by the idea of business space for private players in public health facilities while supporters feel it will improve the pallid health care infrastructure in the State. The architect of the new model, J.P. Mishra, chief of the State Health Resource Centre — the State Health Department’s technical assistance body...

-The Hindu Unless the government regulates the growth of the private sector and makes it accountable, the worn-down public health infrastructure cannot be revitalised The absence of a well thought out policy framework for strengthening the health system is the most important issue facing the health sector in India. In the government, there is no clarity on what the nation’s health system should be 10 years hence. Should it be a public...