-IndiaSpend.org Of those with zero assets, nearly 80 million people -- the population of Germany -- or 16 million households are Adivasi In a country where "inclusion" is the emerging political mantra, an estimated 215 million Indians - roughly the population of Canada and Pakistan combined - are largely excluded from economic progress. These paupers, of sorts, have "zero assets", which means they do not own a television set, a motorcycle, a mobile...
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This time we should get health right -Santosh Mehrotra
-The Hindustan Times The drafting of the National Health Policy (NHP) 2015 is an extremely welcome development. The government's decision to announce Health as a Right is a huge advance. Public health spending as a share of GDP barely rose from 0.9 to 1.1% under the previous government. Governments in rich countries have been spending 5% of GDP on health for decades. Why should we welcome the NHP 2015? Countries with...
More »Government vs Private Schools in ASER 2014: Need to Avoid Binaries -Vivek Vellanki
-Economic and Political Weekly The release of the independent Annual Status of Education Report has become an annual event, bringing attention to the status of learning amongst children in rural India. An examination of the 2014 report looks at the representation of data within the binary of government vs private schooling, as well as the silence of the report on the quality of private schools, and highlights the need to move...
More »'Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians'
Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and...
More »Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera
-Economic and Political Weekly This article attempts to resolve the puzzle of public distribution system leakages using the latest available data. Leakages remain high, but there is clear evidence of improvement in recent years, especially in states -- including Bihar -- that have undertaken bold PDS reforms. The main source of leakages is the "above the poverty line" quota, which is due to be phased out under the National Food Security...
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