-The Indian Express   Niti Aayog proposal for privatising public hospitals is ill-designed, driven by ideology more than welfare The corporate hospitals have been resting their gaze on public hospitals for long: Land, doctors and patients. Finally, in the Niti Aayog, they have found a sympathetic collaborator. As per media reports, the Aayog is all set to push states to privatise well functioning district hospitals in the Tier 2 and 3...

-The Times of India BENGALURU: Successive droughts and depletion of groundwater table in Karnataka has destroyed a whopping 2.28 crore arecanut and coconut trees. "The state has witnessed low rainfall this year too and farmers are finding it difficult to source water even after drilling borewells up to 1,200 feet, the SITuation is getting worse," law minister T B Jayachandra told reporters here on Monday while pointing to an imminent horticultural crisis....

-PTI India is a society that is poor, but is respected for its scientific temper and research, and "we should not backtrack on that," the former World Bank chief economist said. Mumbai: Amid a debate over incidents of lynching, noted economist Kaushik Basu has warned that social damages could have a long-lasting impact on the economy than some wrong policy moves, “such as demonetisation”. Delivering the 23rd Lalit Doshi memorial lecture here...

-The Hindu Replacement of systems more than 7 years old, Centre’s digital push lead to cutting down on new installations A combination of factors, including cash crunch following demonetisation of high value notes announced in November last, have led to commercial banks cutting down on the number of automated teller machines (ATMs) particularly those not located in branches (off-SITe ATMs), latest RBI data showed. According to Reserve Bank of India (RBI), there were...

-PTI New Delhi: Foodgrain output in the ongoing 2017-18 kharif season is likely to surpass last year’s record of 138.04 million tonnes due to higher acreage and a good monsoon for the second straight year, Agriculture Secretary Shobhana K Pattanayak said today. So far, more than 80 per cent of the sowing of kharif crops — paddy, pulses, oilseeds, cotton, sugarcane and jute — has been completed and planting will continue in...