-The Times of India Prime Minister Modi said child malnutrition would be tackled on a "mission mode", his predecessor called it a national shame. Yet, policymaking is dependent on malnutrition data from 2005-06, with the data from the Rapid Survey on Children (RSOC) carried out by Unicef and the women and child development (WCD) ministry in 2013 yet to be made available. The data was sent to the health ministry for...

-Business Standard Amendments skip key controversial issues The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has made nine amendments to its land Bill, tabled in Parliament on Monday. Most of these were cosmetic in nature, leaving the key elements of the original promulgation intact - the lack of need for consent and social impact assessment while acquiring land for private projects; public-private partnerships and government acquisitions. Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh did move two amendments...

-The Indian Express Universal health coverage (UHC) is at the heart of the government's healthcare agenda. The 12th Five Year Plan targets a long-term goal of UHC where "each individual would have assured access to a defined essential range of medicines and treatment at an affordable price, which would be entirely free for a large percentage of the population". But this year's reduced budgetary allocation raises troublesome questions about its ability...

-The Hindu The proposed amendment bill to the Land Act has amendments that are an exercise of state power without reason, with the basis for these changes on assertions of a vague agenda of development. What is equally disturbing is that at least some of the changes that these amendments propose, if passed, would also be patently unconstitutional In his celebrated treatise on constitutional law, H.M. Seervai began a discussion on the...

-The Hindu The Budget overlooks the fact that human capabilities are as important as physical capital for economic growth and the quality of life. It goes back to the days when growth and development sounded synonymous, physical capital was thought to be the key, and human capital took a back seat Once upon a time, around the end of the Second World War, there was a naive view in development economics that...