-The Hindu Rescuing Maternal and Child Health-only systems, which have become under-resourced and have built a very high-cost but low-performance culture, will be a challenging task. Given the rising burden of non-communicable diseases, there is an increasing demand to build health systems that can address these concerns. However, given how large the unfinished agenda of the Millennium Development Goals is, the Indian government has chosen to stay focussed on Maternal and Child...

-Business Standard After outsourcing primary health care and diagnostic services to private entities, the state plans universal health insurance scheme for treatment at private hospitals The Rajasthan government has decided to provide health insurance to the 70 million residents in the state. The move comes after the government's decision to outsource primary health centres and specialised diagnostic services to private players on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode. The Swasthya Bima Yojana scheme is provided...

-TheWire.in Rather than assisting states in the implementation of the Food Security Act, recent orders of the Ministry of Food seem to indicate the Centre is setting up barriers by burdening them with bogus additional requirements On July 7, 2015 the Union minister of consumer affairs, food and public distribution, Ram Vilas Paswan cracked the whip in a meeting with state food ministers by announcing that states that do not implement the...

Two recent reports show that this social sector scheme has had a causal impact in improving lives, especially for women and children Fourteen million people escaped falling into poverty under the world’s largest anti-poverty programme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). In 10 years of its existence, the scheme reduced poverty by 32 per cent. Recent data also shows that more women are drawing cash incomes, more children...

-Economic and Political Weekly A survey to identify who the poor are and how many are actually poor is necessary if programmes and benefits targeted at the needy are to reach them. The Socio Economic Caste Census, of which partial results have been published, was intended to do this. Yet, even a cursory look at the figures indicates that they call for a willing suspension of disbelief. N C Saxena (naresh.saxena@gmail.com) was...