-The Indian Express Reducing preventable disease should be a developmental priority. Government needs to invest in a healthier future. Indians are famous for our savings mentality. The 2014 Towers Watson Global Benefits Attitude Survey found that Indians had the second-highest savings rate, after the Chinese. We save for a variety of reasons, to create a safety net and to yield returns in future. While there is a time to save, there...

The nation can be proud of running some of the world's largest programmes on social safety nets, says the latest report by World Bank. However, public spending on safety nets is still low in comparison to neighbouring countries Bangladesh and Pakistan. India tops the list of 136 countries for running the world's largest school feeding programme i.e. the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS), and also the biggest public works programme i.e....

-The Economic Times Nobody has ever accused former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav of number crunching. All his life he has milked cows and caste without ever needing to count. Yet, he is all set to lead a protest march in Patna on July 13 seeking the publication of caste data in the socio-economic caste census. If the other big Yadav chieftain, Mulayam Singh Yadav, rakes it up in Uttar...

-The Indian Express Push for cash transfers tacitly asks citizens to fend for themselves The implementation of cash transfers by a state would necessarily entail: one, the identification of beneficiaries on the basis of predefined eligibility parameters; and two, calculating the exact amount of money, equivalent to the monetary value of the subsidy that beneficiaries were supposed to get, and transferring it into their bank accounts — with the intention that they...

-The Indian Express The public health system is failing all stakeholders: practitioners, patients and their families. Doctors — or, more broadly, medical practitioners — are the most important cogs in any health delivery system. They diagnose the sick, devise a course of treatment and follow it through, the lead problem-solvers, as it were. As a series in this newspaper has shown, however, doctors, particularly in the public health system, are overworked...