The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act was billed to be a giant leap towards universalization of education in India. However, it has acquired the dubious distinction of being the only fundamental right that exists just on paper. More than seven years after the Constitution was amended in 2002 to make free and compulsory education to children in the age group of 6-14 a fundamental right and over four...
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CAG questions NRHM funds’ flow management by Aarti Dhar
Maintenance of accounts not proper, it says Most States yet to adopt e-banking Delay in release of funds from State health societies to district health societies The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has expressed dissatisfaction over the funds flow management under the National Rural health Mission (NRHM) and recommended that it be rationalised with appropriate norms and criteria. The maintenance of accounts at the State, district and below levels was...
More »Opposition to village ‘doctor’ bill bulldozed
Health minister Surjya Kanta Mishra today pushed through the Assembly a bill that will allow “half-doctors” to practise in villages, steamrollering a demand from the Left Front and the Opposition to defer the legislation. The West Bengal Health Regulatory Authority Bill will permit “rural health practitioners” with a three-year diploma to treat patients in villages where qualified doctors are loath to go. The “health practitioners” will not be called doctors, the...
More »Alarming deaths of children in Tribal MP
According to a report by Shirish Khare in NewsWing.com, a news portal dedicated to raising the issues of the voiceless in the Hindi belt, 25 children have died in just two villages of Meghnagar block in the month of October at the tribal dominated Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. The report (see text link below) cites under-nutrition as the likely reason for the tragedy. The alarming NewsWing.com report says that the...
More »Whither Rural India? by Kripa Shankar
The rural population is at present estimated at 85 crores. Ten per cent of the households are completely landless. Another 52 per cent have holdings of less than 0.2 hectare. The per capita agricultural land in the rural areas has come down to 0.12 hectare. According to the National Sample Survey, the annual income of an agricultural household from farming is less than Rs 12,000 and from all sources it...
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