-Institute of Economic Growth The paper explores the trends, composition, and incidence of out-of-pocket health expenditure (OOPHE) in India, which has been the predominant means of financing its health care needs. Unit-level data from the National Sample Survey on Household Consumer Expenditure for the years 1993–94, 2004–05, and 2011–12 are used. Results show that the burden of OOPHE has increased steadily over time, but more for the lower economic quintiles. Drugs...

-Hindustan Times The Union cabinet on Wednesday approved “Housing for All”, the NDA government’s flagship programme of building two crore houses by 2022. The scheme is piloted by the housing and urban poverty alleviation ministry. Aiming to promote affordable housing, the cabinet approved a substantial increase in interest subsidy on housing loans — from 4% to 6.50% — for those from the economically weaker sections (EWS) and low-income groups (LIG). This would...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...

-The Financial Express The Narendra Modi government has pledged to employ all machinery at its disposal to deal with a second straight year of deficient monsoon. The Narendra Modi government has pledged to employ all machinery at its disposal to deal with a second straight year of deficient monsoon and denied an impending distress in the vulnerable pockets of the country, but a dispassionate look at the ground situation would show there...

-The Indian Express To improve the educational status of Scheduled Castes, a fresh understanding of their achievements and challenges is necessary. The concern of scholars, planners and policymakers has been to achieve the goals set in our Constitution: equality, justice and equal opportunity for all. However, in the period after Independence, it was revealed that education was not necessarily linked to social and economic development and the majority of Indians continued...