-The Hindu Malnutrition is a complex problem and results from not getting enough food to not getting the right kind of food, says the United Nations WFP (India) Country Director Even with the world's largest subsidised food distribution systems serving 65 million poor families across the country, India continues to be home to a quarter of all malnourished people worldwide. In view of the incredible challenge of improving nutrition for all people...
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Lessons from Thailand: For universal health coverage, invest in public systems and human resources -T Sundararaman
-Scroll.in Thailand spends as much of its GDP on health as India, yet it offers the entire range of healthcare services to all citizens for free. Finance Minister Arun Jailtley’s Budget speech this year and the subsequent media coverage projected insurance coverage as being almost synonymous with universal health coverage. Nothing could be further from the truth. Health insurance is only a small part of ensuring universal health coverage. Besides, to...
More »Health Budget Could Have Been About People, But Now It's About Markets -Ravi Duggal
-TheWire.in The Budget speech pitch of ‘Swastha Bharat’ as ‘Samridha Bharat’ is deception, because the allocation for realising that is missing. Each year when the Budget is tabled in parliament, there is excitement and expectations. Should we say this used to be? Things have changed dramatically over the years. In the good old days, during the Budget session, we would wait excitedly to know about the price hike in petrol, diesel and kerosene....
More »Another Budget, Another Year of Ignoring Binding Laws on Rights -Nikhil Dey and Aruna Roy
-TheWire.in The making of the Union Budget has been a far too secretive and hidden exercise. Social sector expenditure and allocations related to policy announcements should be matters of open ongoing debate. On December 20, 2017, a group of 60 eminent economists sent an open letter to the finance minister stating: “We are writing to draw your attention to two urgent priorities for the forthcoming budget.” The first was to increase the central...
More »Making health insurance work -K Srinath Reddy
-The Hindu The National Health Protection Scheme is disconnected from primary care. It also needs to be scaled up It is unusual for a health programme to become the most prominent feature of a Union Budget. The previous government missed the bus when it failed to implement the recommendations of the High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage (2011). Yet, those recommendations resonate in the Budget of 2018, with commitment to universal...
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