-The Hindu The pact will have framework on pledges by countries Paris: As talks on the text of the Paris agreement began on Tuesday, Indian negotiators said they were introducing provisions in it for a technology and financial mechanism that will make it possible to raise low-cost capital and widely deploy renewable technologies. On Tuesday, the focus was on making technological collaboration written into the Paris deal, Ajay Mathur, Director-General, Bureau of Energy...

-Deccan Herald MoF wants more transparency and public involvement For the first time, the government has decided to go for crowdsourcing in the Budget-making exercise and invited suggestions from the public for India’s Budget to be presented in February-March next year. The step has been taken to infuse more transparency into the Budget-making and increase people‘s participation in the mammoth exercise. “In order to infuse more transparency into the Budget-making exercise and to have...

-The Hindu Rescuing Maternal and Child Health-only systems, which have become under-resourced and have built a very high-cost but low-performance culture, will be a challenging task. Given the rising burden of non-communicable diseases, there is an increasing demand to build health systems that can address these concerns. However, given how large the unfinished agenda of the Millennium Development Goals is, the Indian government has chosen to stay focussed on Maternal and Child...

-Economic and Political Weekly The draft National Health Policy 2015 is an improvement over its predecessors--the policies of 1984 and 2002. However, it also reveals several gaps, inconsistencies and blind spots which tend to dilute otherwise constructive proposals. The purpose of this article is to open up the draft to further public debate and comment. Forum for Medical Ethics Society (fmesmumbai@gmail.com) is a voluntary, non-profit organisation registered in Mumbai. The society was...

-DNA The nationwide one day strike according to the trade unions is supposed to be the biggest strike ever in the country. This protest is a strike against the anti-worker economic policies of the government. 10 central trade unions have declared a nation-wide strike on September 2 which is said to impact essential services. This strike is to protest against the changes that have been made in the labour laws by...