-Business Standard/ IndiaSpend Seven of the nine 'high-focus' states report underspending on healthcare Nine of India’s poorest states–home to 581 million or 48% of India’s population–account for 70% of the country’s infant deaths, 75% of under-five deaths and 62% of maternal deaths, but do not spend even the money they have set aside for healthcare, according to an IndiaSpend analysis of 2017 Reserve Bank of India data on state budgets. The data also...

-NDTV Telangana government had coached children from underprivileged backgrounds, who were students of free government schools. Now they will go to IIT and NIT. Hyderabad: Marginal farmers, labourers, orphans, Dalits and tribals - nearly a hundred children from very underprivileged backgrounds have made Telangana proud this year. With special coaching from free government schools, 27 of them have cracked the entrance examination for the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology. The other...

-The Asian Age The NGOs have warned against treating poor children across the state as guinea pigs, putting their health at risk. Mumbai: Instead of providing hot cooked, nutritious meals to malnourished kids, the state women and Child Welfare department  has recently decided to purchase corporate-manufactured ‘ready to use therapeutic food (RUTF)’ packets for severely malnourished children across Maharashtra. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on August 4, permitting the use...

-The Hindu Kodenchery Station police are scripting stories of compassion Kozhikode: Two underprivileged persons from the Kodenchery station limits will soon have their own house, thanks to the compassion of a group of police officers from the station. Work is on in full swing to complete construction of the houses. “Malar, a rubber tapper from Tamil Nadu, has been living at Theyyappara under a plastic-thatched roof. The house we completed with the support...

-The Hindu Liberalisation has eroded the institutional capacity to train young people who might pursue liberal values The other day, a student asked me what exactly the word ‘liberal’ mean. She wanted to know whether ‘liberalisation’ promotes ‘liberal’ values. She had noticed that institutions of higher education, which are supposed to promote liberal values, were finding it difficult to resist ideological and commercial pressures triggered by the process of economic liberalisation. So,...