-The Indian Express Insecurity, more than poverty or indebtedness, is the key economic issue that politicians must address If social inequality is the most acutely felt social problem in India, insecurity, more than poverty, is the most acutely felt economic problem. While most measures suggest that only around one-fifth of the population today is under the official poverty line, large sections of those even much above that line are subject to...

-Frontline.in The 2018 Global Nutrition Report points to the link between income and malnutrition but falls short of examining critical factors such as enhanced public spending that determine the levels of hunger and nutrition. In 2017, fewer than one in five children, six to 24 months of age, in the world ate a minimally accepted diet. More than half of them in the same age group did not get the recommended number...

-Scroll.in The ASHA unions in Bihar are demanding government employee status and a minimum wage. Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHA workers in Bihar went on an indefinite strike from December 1 with a 12-point charter of demands. Bihar has 93,687 ASHA workers – the second highest contingent of the one million ASHA workers in India. They are the key link between the healthcare system and rural populations and have to perform...

-The Telegraph Their demand for assured remunerative prices, therefore, is perfectly justified There are occasions when one suddenly becomes aware not just of the inadequacy of economic concepts for understanding reality but even of their obfuscating role. One such occasion was the recent kisan march in Delhi. The peasants have been facing distress for long, which has resulted in more than three lakh suicides over the last two-and-a-half decades, in growing indebtedness...

-Newsclick.in According to patients’ accounts, the 108 helpline either did not respond, or the condition of the ambulance was reported to be ‘not fit’ to ferry patients. The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) staged demonstrations on December 10 in Shimla outside the district commissioner’s (DC’s) office, against the deteriorating health facilities for women in government hospitals in Himachal Pradesh. There are three government hospitals in the state capital – Indira Gandhi Medical...