-Frontline.in The Assembly elections have put under intense scrutiny Narendra Modi’s Gujarat model of development which is touted as worthy of replication throughout the country. Audit reports of the CAG provide ample evidence of it being inefficient, corrupt and not beneficial to the common people. THE standard indicators of development, as is understood in theory and practice, comprise a range of indices, and not necessarily the level of private investment in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Most households covered by government-funded health insurance have to use personal funds to pay for hospitalisation, a study has suggested, iterating concerns about the wisdom of deploying public-funded insurance schemes to seek universal health coverage in India. The study, designed to determine how well government-funded health insurance protects households from health expenditure, has found that 66 per cent of such households who sought healthcare in public hospitals and...

-The New Indian Express NEW DELHI: Amid controversial reports of hunger deaths in Jharkhand due to PDS beneficiaries being turned away, economist Jean Dreze says that even official records show that a significant proportion of people are being deprived of food rations every month. In an interview with New Sunday Express, the prime mover behind the NREGA welfare scheme said “this does not mean that Aadhaar is solely responsible for the failures...

-TheWire.in Studies from Chhattisgarh and other states show that most private hospitals force people to pay additional money even after using health insurance. The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY) or the National Health Insurance Scheme, was initiated in Chhattisgarh in 2009 for below poverty line (BPL) families. In 2012, Chhattisgarh expanded the scheme to non-BPL families as well, through the Mukhyamantri Swasthya Bima Yojana (MSBY), making it a universal scheme. Under the...

-The Hindu SC issues notice to Centre on plea challenging mandatory linkage with mobiles The Supreme Court on Monday decided to constitute a five-judge Constitution Bench to hear petitions from November against the validity of the Aadhaar scheme. A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra took the step after Attorney General K.K. Venugopal said falsehoods had been spread about Aadhaar linking. A separate Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan,...