-Down to Earth   Delhi High Court exempts four private hospitals from treating the poor for free. Experts fear other hospitals will follow Many a poor patient has benefitted from the Supreme Court's 2011 order which mandates that all private hospitals which received land at a lower price from the government have to treat a certain number of people from the economically weaker sections (EWS) for free. Take the case of four-year-old Shagun, born...

-Down to Earth   Demand minimum support price of above Rs 2,000 per 100 kg; say present MSP does not meet even cost of cultivation Maharashtra government has recently announced the minimum support price for wheat at Rs 1,400 per quintal (100 kg). The decision has not gone down well with either the farmers or the agriculture department. Farmers in the state have questioned the rationale behind this low MSP, saying that such...

-The Hindu   So far, the electoral promises of allocation of six per cent of GDP to education have remained as pious wishes Election manifestoes over decades have rhetorically spoken of six per cent of GDP or more to education and this election has been no exception; the actual spending on education is only around three per cent. Not surprisingly, school infrastructure and teaching personnel are inadequate and of poor quality while the dropout...

-The Indian Express   Debate on the Gujarat model is more about stated positions, less about reality. Having done economic modelling all my life, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, which boasted of the Wharton model and Lawrence Klein, and later, in the days when planning still mattered, while heading the modelling division of the Planning Commission, I find it bewildering that Gujarat's substantial real achievements and equally real problems are...

-The Indian Express   MGNREGA is beset with failures of planning, execution, monitoring and accountability. This election season, we have seen the BJP seeking the people's mandate on the slogan "sab ka saath, sab ka vikas". The Congress harps primarily on a "we gave you" list. The first in this list is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA). The 11th Five Year Plan recognised that 30 crore people lived below the...