-The Hindu The National Medical Commission Bill’s proposal to permit ‘for profit’ colleges will undermine the aim of creating a cadre of medical professionals able and willing to work in small towns and villages The many reports commissioned by the Government of India on the state of medical care invariably highlight one fact: a large number of Indians do not have access to proper and adequate medical care. India currently faces a “double...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: The government wants to send people who pay bribes to jail. But, it has refused to make a distinction between people who collude with officials and those who are coerced into paying up. This means people such as Sumita, too, can be jailed. Sumita lost her 10-month-old son on August 9 in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich hospital when the child did not get an injection. The staff delayed the injection...

-The Indian Express India should learn from China and start with liberalisation of rural land, labour and capital markets before attempting bigger things. Independence Day has come and gone with its usual mix of celebrations, pride and ruminations on how things could be better. Interestingly, several media commentaries tagged the event with the 25th anniversary of economic reforms, launched in 1991 around the same time of the year. They largely dwelt on the theme...

Rising prices of dal: How to deal with it? The 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 2016 as the International Year of Pulses. In India, however, ordinary citizens are under enormous duress due to the skyrocketing prices of dal/ lentils since the last one year. The website of Price Monitoring Cell of the Department of Consumer Affairs shows that dal prices varied across places. For example, the...

-The Times of India Jaipur: They were meant to ease processes and clean up corruption in distributing food grain to the poor. Instead, the e-Point of Sale (PoS) machines have thrown up more problems than solutions. Each of these devices costs roughly Rs 17,000. They are programmed to read fingerprints of those registered to receive subsidized grain, connect to the Aadhaar database over the Internet and authenticate the recipient. Clearly, things aren't playing...