-Livemint.com Research provides evidence that a blanket farm loan waiver scheme is detrimental to the development of credit markets The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the 2017 state elections in Uttar Pradesh with a thumping majority and once again, the state government has a debt-waiver package ready to be implemented. The BJP’s electoral manifesto had committed to write off loans of small and marginal farmers, which would approximately cost the government Rs37,000...

-TheWire.in Conditionalities related to utilising health services do not make any sense in the absence of a service guarantee, and only serve to blame the victims and not the system for its failures. Nearly six months after the prime minister announced maternity benefits of Rs 6,000 to pregnant and lactating mothers, the cabinet yesterday approved the implementation of the maternity benefits programme (MBP) – a scheme that will likely exclude a large...

-The Hindu The discourse must move beyond a top-down approach to listen to the people and formulate best insurance practices Much ink has been spilled in documenting the inadequacy of budgetary allocations for public health insurance, specifically for the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), the world’s largest publicly-funded health insurance (PFHI) scheme. Though the 2017-18 budget allocation has marginally increased from last year’s revised estimates, it has declined relative to last year’s...

-Business Standard Alleges while govt's providing incentives to corporate houses, cos are cutting jobs for more profit Chennai: The New Democratic Labour Front (NDLF) IT Employees Wing, a trade union, is planning to conduct a protest march next week against what it calls an unjustified dismissal of employees by IT firms. It is looking to represent around 20 employees who have been dismissed from various IT firms with the Tamil Nadu labour...

-The Indian Express Six months on, there appears little justification for demonetisation in theories of politics, governance. Demonetisation has been evaluated through multiple dimensions — political, economic, constitutional, legal — and the role of the institutions involved. However, what were the philosophical underpinnings for “the most sweeping change in currency policy that has occurred anywhere in the world in decades”? One might think demonetisation was from the utilitarian school (given the rhetoric around...