The Mumbai blasts have again brought into focus the health infrastructure in Bihar, especially the state capital, and raised questions on whether the city is equipped to deal with emergency situations. The intensive care unit (ICU) at Patna Medical College and Hospital — the premier tertiary care centre in the state — itself needs emergency treatment owing to the poor condition of infrastructure and logistics. Most of its equipment are defunct...
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Corrupt Bundelkhand officials feed off aid for dead farmers by Neha Dixit
In Uttar Pradesh's most impoverished region, Bundelkhand, government officials feed off not just the living but also the dead. Headlines Today has exposed how corrupt officials exploit the grieving families of farmers, who have committed suicide. In a visit to Bundelkhand in 2008, AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi repeated a phrase borrowed from his father Rajiv Gandhi: "Out of 100 paise, only 15 paise reaches the poor". While travelling through this dustbowl...
More »Challenging the poverty dimension of inflation by Madan Sabnavis
A perverse, yet novel reason put forward to explain high inflation is that the poor are eating more as they are becoming less poor. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has been extolled for being responsible for higher consumption, which in a way is a vindication of high inflation. The extended logic used here is that if the poor are eating more and we are paying high...
More »Mamata to Maoists in Jangalmahal: lay down arms and sit for talks
-The Hindu West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday urged the Maoists in the Jangalmahal region that spans parts of three districts in the southwest of the State to lay down their arms and sit for talks with the State government. She assured them of compensation and rehabilitation package if they did so. Ms. Banerjee was addressing public meetings on Tuesday in Paschim Medinipur district on the first day of...
More »Latest employment trends from the NSSO by CP Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh
The results of the latest NSSO large survey on employment and unemployment provide crucial evidence on the pattern of inadequate job creation in this phase of high economic growth. This edition of MacroScan provides an initial analysis of the results. No sooner were the results of the 66th Round of the National Sample Survey Organisation (relating to data collected in 2009-10) released, than they became the subject of great controversy. Surprisingly,...
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