-The Indian Express Budget’s bias toward privately-delivered care undermines universal health coverage Until about four decades ago, specialist healthcare (secondary and tertiary care) was largely a province of public hospitals, and the private sector largely kept itself to the provision of generalist healthcare. This underwent a transformation with the rise of the advanced medical interventions comprising tertiary-care medicine like organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Given these highly-profitable medical advances, the private...

-The Indian Express The scheme was introduced in October last year, four months after farmer unrest claimed six lives. The registration for rabi crops — chana, mustard, lentil and onion — will begin from February 12 at 3,500 primary agriculture co-op societies and continue until March 12. Bhopal (M.P.): Encouraged by response to Bhavantar Bhugtan Yojana (BBY), a price deficiency payment scheme implemented last year for eight kharif crops in the wake...

-The Indian Express Former Union Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday argued against the move to make Aadhaar mandatory, saying the data collected for it was prone to misuse in the world of information technology. “In the era of information technology, the question of possibility of misuse is not just a possibility. It will be misused,” the senior advocate told a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Communal incidents across the country rose to 822 last year from 703 in 2016, reversing the falling trend seen in the preceding year. As many as 111 persons were killed and 2,384 injured due to communal violence in 2017, up from 86 killed and 2,321 injured in 2016. In 2016, communal incidents were down from the levels seen in 2015 (751). The death toll in 2017...

-PTI Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, during a debate on demonetisation in the Upper House on November 17, 2016, had termed the loan issue of Vijay Mallya a "terrible legacy" that the NDA government had inherited from the previous UPA regime. The finance ministry has told the Central Information Commission (CIC) that it does not have information about the loans given to industrialist Vijay Mallya, prompting the transparency panel to remark that the...