-Economic and Political Weekly A comment on the article "Falling Sick, Paying the Price: NSS 71st Round on Morbidity and Costs of Healthcare" (EPW, 15 August 2015) which suggests that the National Sample Survey Office's 71st round on social consumption of health can be read differently. Nishant Jain (jainnishu@gmail.com) is Deputy Program Director at German Development Cooperation, India; Alok Kumar is Adviser (Health) at NITI Aayog; Sunil Nandraj is Adviser (Clinical Establishments...

-Hindustan Times School textbooks in recent decades have frequently become battlegrounds for ideological contestation in India. Most textbook wars are to advance majoritarian perspectives on history and culture. However, a recent very different textbook skirmish broke out about the public and private sectors in healthcare. The story of this ideological clash is bemusing and instructive, illuminating competing perspectives on the nature of education, healthcare and markets in new India. This clash surfaced...

-The Tribune To ensure stable prices of pulses and attractive returns for producers, policies of domestic prices and tariffs should blend. Import duties must be calibrated with demand. As the Indian economy grows at a rate of 7 per cent plus, assuming low growth as an aberration, the food basket will diversify. Within grains, the movement will be to pulses as shown by the  expert group on pulse production. The yield and...

-Livemint.com It is early days yet to claim victory in the larger struggle to correct the fundamental bias in WTO against developing countries The impasse regarding the implementation of the trade facilitation agreement (TFA) in the World Trade Organization (WTO) seems to be coming to an end after India and the US reportedly resolved their differences on the food security outcome of the Bali ministerial conference held last December. Apparently, the US...

-The Hindu SJM leader says the nation is capable of growing on its own strength and capital With the Swadesh Jagran Manch, an RSS-front to espouse the cause of Swadeshi, questioning the NDA government’s relaxing of FDI norms in 15 sectors, the government is witnessing opposition from within Sangh Parivar circles to its bid to attract investment. Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) — the Sangh’s arm active among workers — has written...