The disastrous effect of the state throwing up its hands and retreating is most starkly visible in agriculture . Remember: agriculture involves 70 per cent of the country's population , generates about 56 per cent of national income, 64 per cent of total expenditure and about one third of total savings. So, any neglect translates into gigantic costs. And the central crisis in agriculture — production barely matching a depressed...

Governments in India — Centre and states — spend around one per cent of the country's GDP on health. Only five countries — Burundi, Myanmar, Pakistan , Sudan and Cambodia — have a lower figure than this. But private spending on the crucial sector is 4.2 per cent of GDP, among the top 20 countries in the world. Within this private spend, employers pay for about 9 per cent and...

One of the most intriguing features of India's agrarian economy in recent years is the persistence of agrarian distress in many regions, even while agricultural credit flow has risen sharply. Rising flow of credit to agriculture is normally associated with buoyancy in the farm sector. A closer look at the data on agricultural credit reveals that what is termed agricultural credit may have very little to do with agriculture, the...

The shortage of doctors and paramedical staff for the country's poor and downtrodden is assuming alarming proportions. According to the latest data on rural health statistics, a huge number of posts sanctioned for medical staff in primary and community health centers have been lying vacant. Consider the case of primary health centres. The vacancies stack up to 5,224 doctors, 7,243 health care workers and 1701 health assistants, respectively. The situation...

Taking the first step towards implementation of the Right to Education in Uttar Pradesh, the state government will identify the ‘out-of-school’ children across 72 districts in the state. The Education department, under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), will launch in August a door-to-door survey to identify the ‘out-of-school’ children in the age group of 6 and 14 years of age. In rural areas, the process will also include an undertaking by gram...