Regulations covering public health should override personal rights and the country cannot wait any more for a good public health law. The health care industry, including institutions of medical education, hospitals and pharmaceutical businesses, have grown into behemoths that can do considerable harm in the absence of independent and effective regulatory systems. While there are no success stories in the regulation of any kind of industry in India, I will focus...

-The Business Standard The state govt is set to redefine public distribution system by linking it with insurance smart cards Several experiments are taking place across the country to make the public distribution system (PDS) free of leakages. Chhattisgarh that has led these is set to mark a new precedent with its PDS going smart in the next three months. The state government has reached an agreement with the labour ministry to...

A school principal in Melur in Madurai district, Tamil Nadu, is reported to have denied admission to two girls whose parents had married them off after they completed Class X ( The Hindu , June 23). Prima facie , it seems the principal is wrongly applying her authority. Also, in the broader social context, it seems strange and unacceptable that the benefits of education should be denied to a girl...

PATIALA/SANGRUR: Everyone agrees that theNREGA is causing a shortage of agricultural labour. Everyone, that is, except the workers themselves. For the last two years, the "success" of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (commonly referred to as NREGA) in reducing the number of men migrating out of India's poorest states has become something of a truism. In Punjab, this has resulted in dozens of news articles about the shortage...

-Down to Earth World is moving towards natural capital as a measure of economic growth After using gross domestic product, or GDP, as the universal measurement of economy for six decades, the world has begun looking beyond this gold standard for measuring a country’s economy. On May 25, 10 African countries agreed to incorporate their natural capital, or value of their natural resources, into their national accounts to make better economic decisions. The...