-Hindustan Times School textbooks in recent decades have frequently become battlegrounds for ideological contestation in India. Most textbook wars are to advance majoritarian perspectives on history and culture. However, a recent very different textbook skirmish broke out about the public and private sectors in healthcare. The story of this ideological clash is bemusing and instructive, illuminating competing perspectives on the nature of education, healthcare and markets in new India. This clash surfaced...
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Maternal mortality on a decline, but challenges remain -Vani Manocha
-Down to Earth An earlier report had said that India accounts for the maximum number of maternal deaths in the world — 17 per cent or nearly 50,000 of the 289,000 The number of women dying during pregnancy, childbirth or within six weeks after birth has fallen by 44 per cent since 1990, say United Nations agencies, including the World Bank. A recently-released report has said that maternal deaths around the world dropped...
More »Acute Malnutrition: A Community Fights Back -Stella Paul
-IPSNews.net DHARNI (Maharashtra): In the semi-darkness of her hut in Berdaballa, a forest village 610 km northeast of Mumbai, 28-year old Babita Mavaskar sat with her newborn baby boy watching him checked by a paramedic in an important antenatal exam. After about 20 minutes the health worker emerged from the shelter and made a big announcement, “All is well. Everything, the weight, temperature and height … is normal.” The small crowd of...
More »World Bank poverty estimates are poor, says government -Dilasha Seth
-Business Standard Says the actual poverty is much higher than suggested by the multilateral lender, adding there is lack of scientific basis in computing the poverty line The government has contested the World Bank's recently released data that showed only 12.4 per cent of India's population was poor in 2011-12, considering an expenditure cut-off of $1.9 a person a day on purchasing power parity (PPP) terms. It said the actual poverty was...
More »The Indian women who took on a multinational and won -Justin Rowlatt
-BBC This is the story of an extraordinary uprising, a movement of 6,000 barely educated women labourers who took on one of the most powerful companies in the world. In a country plagued by sexism they challenged the male-dominated world of trade unions and politics, refusing to allow men to take over their campaign. And what's more, they won. You may well have enjoyed the fruits of their labour. The women are tea pickers...
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