-IANS New Delhi: Coordinated efforts by various ministries will strengthen the government systems and will help in enhancing maternal health care, Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed said Tuesday. "Planning Commission is considering having a meeting with multiple ministries like health and women and child development on urgent cross-cutting issues like health and nutrition," Hameed said. She suggested that recommendations on crucial health issues like maternal health care can be shared with the...

-The Indian Express No magic pill solution or quick fix can make up for basic administrative deficiencies In a review of Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen's latest book in the Financial Times (July 12, 2013), historian Ramachandra Guha questions whether the Indian state is "up to the job of doing more to tackle poverty". Mainstream debates about the persistence of poverty and pervasive failures in public service delivery in India tend to...

-Frontline The Central government's proposal to hand over the supply of supplementary nutrition to NGOs in the name of "community participation" is surely an invitation for private profiteering on the back of this supposedly public scheme. ENSURING safe and healthy conditions for the reproduction of the population is obviously the most fundamental requirement of any society. So the progress of a society can be determined (and indeed is routinely judged) by the...

-The Hindu The government has reiterated that it will implement the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) in a phased manner to ensure targeted and time-bound delivery of results. Recently, in a reply to a question posed in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Rural Development Pradeep Jain had said that it was the NRLM's mandate to guarantee that at least one member from each identified rural poor household, preferably a woman,...

-The Hindu It cannot get any worse than this. Over three lakh newborns in India die on the very first day of their birth. With this the country ranks as number one in terms of first day of birth mortality; its share in global first-day deaths stands at 29 per cent. The appalling state of Indian health care to which this speaks is further highlighted by the fact that the...