-The Indian Express One of the obvious reasons why public healthcare has not been a priority for successive governments of India lies in the fact that India’s middle class did not need it. As epidemiologists tend to consider that the peak of the COVID-19 epidemic may not come before July, the question of the resilience of the Indian health system becomes more pressing, especially in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad. The...

-The Tribune The Government on Wednesday announced three "major agriculture reforms" for farmers, including an Ordinance to promote “barrier-free inter-state and intra-state trade outside APMC market” and amendment to the Essential Commodities Act., removing commodities like cereals, pulses oilseeds edible oils onion and potatoes from list of essential commodities. Briefing about the three reforms after the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the decisions, Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar called...

-Hindustan Times The new guidelines make the testing criteria in Delhi tighter than those issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research on May 18. The Delhi government on Tuesday released a document underlining its new testing strategy which, counter-intuitively restricts the access to the tests further even as the number of cases in the state continue to grow. The new guidelines make the testing criteria in Delhi tighter than those issued by...

-The Hindu Haryana professor writes to Union, State agriculture Ministers reharding issue Gurugram: Prof. Rajinder Chaudhary, Advisor, Kudarti Kheti Abhiyan, Haryana has expressed disappointment over the fact that despite the known side-effects of aerial spraying of pesticides, the government’s locust control policy was focussed only on chemical spray. He said they completly ignored non-chemical measures. In a letter to the agriculture Ministers and agriculture secretaries of the Centre and Haryana, Prof. Chaudhary said a...

-The Indian Express On Sunday, Health Minister Nitin Patel said the state government has “reviewed the High Court order and its observations” and “held a meeting to discuss and give a reply... next week.” Ahmedabad: ALL COVID patients are managed by junior resident doctors, with no senior professor on duty for rounds or emergency. Doctors on non-Covid duty are not given PPE kits, N-95 masks, or proper gloves. Not even 10 per...