- Economic and Political Weekly Universalising health coverage is the current goal of the health service system in India. Tax-funded insurance for poor families is the method chosen for attaining this objective. The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana was rolled out in 2008 for households below the poverty line, enabling them to access health services in the public and private sectors. However, experience from different countries shows tax-funded insurance systems work well...

-DNA The aim is to drive farmers out of agriculture and turn food production into industrial enterprise Some years ago, former President APJ Abdul Kalam was addressing students at an annual event organised by K Govindacharya's Bhartiya Swabhiman Andolan at Gulbarga in Karnataka. He exhorted students to work hard, educate themselves to become doctors, engineers, civil servants, scientists, economists and entrepreneurs. After he had ended his talk, a young student got...

-Outlook Giving a big push to Prime Narendra Modi's ambitious Clean India mission, the government today proposed a major hike in funds provided for constructing household toilets in rural areas and providing better sanitation facilities in schools and anganwadis. In yet another move, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, who is also in-charge of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, announced the decision to delink MNREGA from toilet construction programme, saying that the...

-The Indian Express India needs a national effort to speed up human development. That India was ranked 135 out of 187 countries on UNDP's human development index is perhaps the greatest concern for a nation with global ambition. In order to sustain our growth momentum and translate the gains of growth into wellbeing at a faster pace, India needs to rejig its strategy for accelerated human development. The performance in education and health...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has tall plans of making India open defecation-free by 2019 and has asked states to ensure toilets for all, but sanitation experts are sceptical whether so much can be done in five years. Pankaj Jain, the drinking water and sanitation secretary, has written to chief secretaries of all states that the Modi regime is committed to ringing in a "Swachh Bharat" by 2019, which marks...