-The Indian Express The World Universal Health Coverage Day, observed on December 12, builds on growing global momentum towards introducing universal health coverage (UHC) in national health plans and reinforces the case for including UHC as a prominent sustainable development goal to be adopted by the UN next year. India proposes to implement a programme of national health assurance, which embraces the principles of UHC. It is expected that the government...

-The Hindu To meet the fiscal deficit target for this year, the Central government is brutally slashing social sector allocations but is keeping expenditure cuts for the physical infrastructure sectors at a minimum. This re-aligning of plan outlays across sectors by the Finance Ministry is in line with the government's priorities. The Narendra Modi government views infrastructure spending as growth-enhancing and an essential element of its plans for reviving the economy. The...

-The Indian Express Eight years after the Sachar committee report on the condition of Muslims and creation of a Ministry of Minority Affairs, a post-Sachar evaluation committee, headed by former JNU professor Amitabh Kundu, has concluded that though a start has been made in addressing development deficits of the community, government interventions have not quite matched in scale the large numbers of the marginalised. Poverty levels among Muslims, the committee found, remained...

-Economic and Political Weekly The National Democratic Alliance government has constituted the IPR Think Tank which, among other things, is to draft the National Intellectual Property Rights Policy. India may not have a policy per se but it has a strong legislation on IPRs, a functioning patents office and mechanisms to grant patents as well as protect consumer interests. The Think Tank has other issues it needs to address, but is...

-The Hindu The failure of Narendra Modi's infrastructure plan reflects the larger failure of the Indian imagination, a mindless enumeration of ideas that have little or no bearing on Indian reality. When much of what is built is a half-baked imitation of disparate items tried and tested elsewhere, it becomes hard to fault Mr. Modi. If the recent image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi swinging on the jhula with Chinese President Xi...