The labour ministry has asked the Prime Minister's Office to direct the Planning Commission to allocate sufficient resources for the UPA government's flagship health insurance scheme for the poor in fiscal 2012-13 so that patients are not refused admission by hospitals.  The Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), that guarantees 30,000 annual health insurance to a family of five, ran into trouble earlier this year due to shortage of funds.  In a letter...

The Jaipur Literary Festival, a giddily chaotic celebration of the written word set on the grounds of a Rajasthan palace, ended in misery and embarrassment today, with the organizers bowing to pressure from local security forces and scotching plans for Salman Rushdie to “appear” at the festival, finally, by video link. Rushdie had already been forced to cancel plans to come to Jaipur after he had received intelligence reports—bogus intelligence,...

What was our immediate response to further decline in the child sex ratio in India? Within days of the provisional 2011 Census results (March-April 2011), the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare reconstituted the Central Supervisory Board for the Pre-conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex selection) Act 1994 , which had not met for 3 years, and on November 30, 2011 the Ministry of Women and Child Development...

After allowing swapping of organs, India is working on another landmark step in organ transplantation: a single apex national organization that will procure and distribute human organs. Union health ministry is setting up the autonomous National Organ Procurement and Distribution Organization (NOPDO) at the Centre and 10 State Organ Procurement and Distribution Organization (SOPDO) under the country's new National Organ Transplant Programme (NOTP). Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, West Bengal, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh,...

-PTI A UP revenue board member and five others were today booked by the CBI in three new cases for allegedly fudging funds in NRHM projects estimated to be over Rs 250 crore as the agency carried out searches at 44 locations across the state and the national capital. Residential premises of revenue board member Pradeep Shukla and officials of public sector undertakings were searched during the operation which was spread across...