-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...

-The Times of India Neetu Meena, 16, in a pale blue uniform, wants to become a nurse. She is the first girl in her family to get this far at school. Schooling is not only free, she gets a scholarship and a bike to come in to the senior secondary government school in Jhar village, Bassi, near Jaipur. At the school, a blackboard lists about twenty schemes, from special scholarships for girls,...

-Business Standard Ruling party MPs suggest changes to six of the nine amendments proposed by govt to the 2013 Act The government is set to relent on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill, 2015. On Monday, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members of a parliamentary joint committee on the Bill suggested amendments that effectively bring back the social impact assessment and consent clauses,...

-Business Standard This could help bypass central legislation and break the land Bill deadlock Ten big states, most of those ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its alliance partners, on Wednesday sought to unshackle themselves from the logjam over amendments to the contentious land acquisition Bill, 2013, by proposing to bring their own laws for boosting infrastructure development. At a NITI Aayog meeting to discuss the land Bill (the Right to...

-The Indian Express The public health system is failing all stakeholders: practitioners, patients and their families. Doctors — or, more broadly, medical practitioners — are the most important cogs in any health delivery system. They diagnose the sick, devise a course of treatment and follow it through, the lead problem-solvers, as it were. As a series in this newspaper has shown, however, doctors, particularly in the public health system, are overworked...