-The Telegraph New Delhi: Most households covered by government-funded health insurance have to use personal funds to pay for hospitalisation, a study has suggested, iterating concerns about the wisdom of deploying public-funded insurance schemes to seek universal health coverage in India. The study, designed to determine how well government-funded health insurance protects households from health expenditure, has found that 66 per cent of such households who sought healthcare in public hospitals and...

-Down to Earth More than 180 farmer organisations from across the country proposed Bills related to debt waiver and fair crop prices in a mock parliament  On the second day of a protest organised by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC), farmers from more than 180 farmer organisations across the country proposed a bill each on debt waiver and fair prices for crops. For two days, thousands of farmers had gathered...

-TheWire A recent article claimed that the Modi government has significantly improved or tweaked the implementation of various schemes started by the UPA-II administration. But the numbers quoted need to be questioned. The Wire recently published an article titled ‘Modi May Have Repackaged 23 UPA Schemes But Most of them Are Working Better Now’. The authors’ main thesis is that even if the names of the government schemes have been changed or...

-The Indian Express Union government must address structural issues in agricultural policy, allow states greater autonomy. Farmers from across the country are out on Delhi’s streets agitating just as the deliberations for the 2018 budget are beginning and it’s time to seek solutions to the structural issues that plague the system. The “one-size-fits-all” policy created for the farm sector is self-destructive in design and programmes meant to double farmer incomes are collapsing. The...

-The Hindu Thousands of farmers gathered at the Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on Monday. Banners and flags of different organisations were waved, but what brought them together was a common demand — a one-time complete waiver of farmer loans and fair prices for their produce. Under a common umbrella of All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC) around 184 farmer groups from across states such as Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh,...