-Reuters The government has ordered a cut of nearly 20% in its 2014-15 healthcare budget due to fiscal strains, putting at risk key disease control initiatives in a country whose public spending on health is already among the lowest in the world. Two health ministry officials told Reuters on Tuesday that more than 60 billion rupees, or $948 million, has been slashed from their budget allocation of around $5 billion for the...
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Free market model has failed: Kaushik Basu -Puja Mehra
-The Hindu "World Bank too has changed its goal to fighting no longer for just eradication of poverty but also for shared prosperity" There is now a consensus the world over that the free market economic model does not work, said World Bank chief economist and former Chief Economic Adviser to the government of India Kaushik Basu on Sunday. Dr. Basu was speaking at a function organised here by the ‘Ideas for...
More »Pranab Bardhan, emeritus professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley interviewed by Pramit Bhattacharya
-Livemint The development economist on the Modi government's initiatives and his stand on them, and MGNREGS The Narendra Modi-led government should consider replacing inefficient subsidies with a basic monthly income for all citizens, says Pranab Bardhan , emeritus professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Bardhan, who recently sparred with economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya in a debate over the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS),...
More »Executive's Environmental Dilemmas: Unpacking a Committee’s Report -Manju Menon and Kanchi Kohli
-Economic and Political Weekly The High-Level Committee set up by the Narendra Modi government to review the major laws relating to environment protection has, in its recommendations, worked towards two sets of objectives: one, to separate business from the messiness of governance, and, two, to redraw the line of demarcation between the judiciary and the executive. Manju Menon (manjumenon@namati.org) and Kanchi Kohli (kanchikohli@namati.org) are with the Centre for Policy Research - Namati...
More »‘Napkin man’ on a mission to empower women -R Ramabhadran Pillai
-The Hindu Kochi (Kerala): Majority of women in India do not use sanitary napkin because of the high cost of the product, says Arunachalam Muruganantham, an entrepreneur who was named one of the 100 most influential persons by Time magazine last year. The school dropout who started his life as a welder at Pudur in rural Coimbatore, has revolutionised the sanitary napkin making industry by developing an innovative machine that costs less...
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