Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made. Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...
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Punjab ‘emptying’ reservoirs to grow water-guzzling rice -Gurpreet Singh Nibber
-Hindustan Times Chandigarh: First, the good news. Punjab has made a record contribution of rice to the central pool. During the 2015-16 crop season, the state contributed 93.5 lakh tonnes to the public distribution system (PDS). Now, the bad news. To grow one kilogram of rice, as many as 5,337 litres of water is required ‑ more than 260 buckets of 20-litre capacity. The water consumed by rice for the central pool...
More »Sorry state of India's health care sector
-Business Standard Investments in the health sector are far lower than those in the transport and energy sectors Of the 4,000-odd multi-crore infrastructure projects in the country, only nine (0.21%) - with a total investment of Rs 938 crore - are in the health sector, according to data published by the finance ministry. The public-private partnership (PPP) projects range from diagnostic centres to super-specialty hospitals. Investments in the health sector are far lower...
More »Nothing free or basic about it -Prabir Purkayastha
-The Hindu We need to provide full Internet at prices people can afford, not privilege private platforms. This is where India’s regulatory system has to step in The airwaves, the newspapers and even the online space are now saturated with a Rs. 100 crore campaign proclaiming that Internet connectivity for the Indian poor is a gift from Facebook which a few churlish net neutrality fundamentalists are opposing. In its campaign, Facebook is...
More »Smoking dips 10% in 2 years in India but women smokers up sharply -Rema Nagarajan & Atul Thakur
-The Times of India Cigarette consumption in India is falling steadily even as the number of women smokers is rising, making it home to the second largest number of female smokers after the United States. According to the latest data on cigarette consumption given by the health ministry in Parliament, the consumption in 2014-15 was 93.2 billion sticks — 10 billion less than in 2012-13. The production of cigarettes too fell from...
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