Progressive strengthening of public facilities is the only way to reach medical services to the population as a whole. “The best form of providing health protection would be to change the economic system which produces ill health, and to liquidate ignorance, poverty and unemployment. The practice of each individual purchasing his own medical care does not work. It is unjust, inefficient, wasteful and completely outmoded ... In our highly geared, modern...

Over the past week, I’ve chronicled my investigative research on starvation in India – a project I’ve been working on with a colleague from the Centre for Equity Studies, a New Delhi think tank. We’ve told stories of people who were forced to eat poisoned roots to stay alive; a family that suffered the deaths of members from three different generations in a span of 24 hours; a woman faced with...

Unless data gathering for the Socio Economic and Caste Census is refined, the exercise could cast out the real claimants. Have the census enumerators recently knocked on your door with swanky tablet computers in hand? If they have, it's because they have begun to go door-to-door in most States to complete the final phase of the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC). This mammoth exercise is being coordinated by more than...

-PTI Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa has expressed her "vehement objection" to the National Commission for Human Resource for Health (NCHRH) Bill, 2011, saying it "undermines" the powers of the state governments.  The Bill, now referred to the Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare by the Rajya Sabha, effectively puts the leadership and decision making process with regard to medical, dental and paramedical education in the "hands of about 25...

An unnecessary controversy has been started by the release of the poverty estimates of 2009-10 by the planning commission. The controversy, which was entirely avoidable, was allowed to go on because of the poor handling of the issue by the planning commission. It is unfortunate that the planning commission was less than willing to own the Tendulkar committee report which was submitted in December 2009 and accepted by the commission...