-The Hindu The National Advisory Council has set up a two-member working group to study the report on Universal Health Coverage (UHC) prepared by the High Level Expert Group and the government’s proposal to expand the scope of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and convert it into a National Health Mission. The two-member group, comprising Mirai Chatterjee and A.K. Shiva Kumar, will work closely with the Ministry of Health and Family...

-The Telegraph In a primary health centre in eastern Jharkhand, the angry shouts of a nurse punctuated the occasional wails of a woman in her early-20s who was in labour pain and only minutes away from delivering her baby. Each time a uterine contraction evoked a yell or a wail or the woman sought a more comfortable position during labour, the nurse or other health workers admonished her, asking her to shut...

-The Hindu Stereotypical government policies and global approaches persist in family planning programmes. Urmila is a 40-year-old domestic worker in western Uttar Pradesh. The mother of six children, all girls, she is now pregnant again and is keen on carrying on with the pregnancy. Her husband is unemployed and is an alcoholic. His relatives have assured her that they will help her to bring up the child and have also hinted...

-The Hindu Business Line India can learn from Brazil’s Bolsa Familia and China’s Gansu Programme to make refinements to its MGNREGA scheme. The development experiences of Brazil, China and India provide a valuable opportunity to understand the relationship between growth and distribution over periods of high rates of growth. The growth story playing out in all the three emerging economies have resulted in large regional as well as spatial inequalities, between rural and...

-PTI Sasaram: Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today pulled up the Bihar government for slow implementation of central flagship schemes like MNREGA and IAY and cautioned that the naxal movement may intensify if adequate steps were not taken to provide basic infrastructure to the rural people. Expressing apparent dissatisfaction with no visible impact of central schemes on people's lives, the minister said that "much more needed to be done by the...