-Livemint.com Every time she felt her bladder was full, 12-year-old Madhuri Kumari left her classroom and ran to her nearby home to use the toilet. At her government-run school in Sangam Vihar, South Delhi, this was the norm for many students for years. The primary school with 1,300 boys and an equal number of girls had neither a toilet nor a drinking water facility. What was more embarrassing for the girl than...

-Business Standard Health cess recommended; public health care to be primary focus The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government plans to increase public investment in health from 1.04 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product) to 2.5 per cent by 2020, with 70 per cent of this being dedicated to primary health care. This target has been set in the overhauled draft National Health Policy that now emphasises on substantially ratcheting up government...

-Ideas for India In 2007, Bihar introduced the coupon system in PDS to curb leakages at fair price shops. This column argues that even though the administrative logic of the coupon system is fundamentally sound, such reform can be effective only when accompanied by institutional transformations that broker change in the existing local politics of inclusion and exclusion.  The performance of Bihar’s public distribution system (PDS) remains a topic of considerable national...

-The Hindu The PMJDY celebrates success on its website, but thousands of Marys remain outside the banking system. This won’t change unless the scheme alters both design and implementation A few months ago, when the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was still being spoken of as a success for the largest number of accounts opened in a day, earning the government a Guinness world record, I visited the branch of a...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Rickshaw pullers, autorickshaw drivers, Anganwadi and Asha workers and other such vulnerable groups may get complete medical care (from primary to tertiary) under the umbrella of employee's state insurance (ESI) scheme. They may also be entitled for a range of cash benefits during exigencies arising out of their jobs such as death, injury, disablement, maternity and unemployment as guaranteed to workers in organized sector under the...