-The Hindu Despite a mountain of evidence testifying to the huge toll of suicide in our youth and the knowledge of effective interventions to prevent suicide, there remains no coordinated effort to address suicide as a public health issue in India. The recent suicides of three young women students in a medical college in Tamil Nadu citing the appalling conditions in their institution add to the mounting toll of suicides among young...

-The Indian Express If India is to improve its ease of doing business rank, the Centre needs to partner with states Twenty-five years ago, there would have been no interest in a subject such as the ease of doing business in India. What mattered then was the level of protection the closed economy provided and the ability to negotiate industrial approvals from Udyog Bhawan. Much water has since flown down the...

-FirstPost.com Preparation of budgets is traditionally an incremental process: the first railway budget of the present government took off from the landscape sketched in the 12th Five Year Plan. Expansion, modernisation and development of railway infrastructure were to be given thrust through 3Ps: Public-Private Partnerships. Budget 2016-17, however, promises a new horizon on two fronts: overcoming challenges through 3Rs: Reorganising, Restructuring and Rejuvenating Indian railways, and introducing pillars of strategy, including zero-based...

-The Hindu Medicines remain overpriced and unaffordable in India. In a country mired in poverty, medical debt remains the second biggest factor for keeping millions in poverty. The international pharmaceutical industry has found its cash cow in India’s beleaguered consumers. With a minimum wage of Rs.250/day for a government worker, a basic wage worker afflicted with a chronic disease like multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis faces penury. His treatment, with drug combinations, which works out...

-TheHansIndia.com The ongoing drought is fuelling distress migration from districts in Telangana, a trend that was witnessed in the early 2000s. The severe drought conditions for the second consecutive year have led to crop failure, mounting debts, chronic unemployment and failure of the NREGA scheme, especially in the districts of Mahbubnagar, Medak, and Adilabad, forcing large-scale exodus of farmers and others.   The fruits of a people’s movement and the world’s largest anti-poverty...