-TheWire.in Most of the ‘reforms’ that are being introduced to address poor delivery of social services are silent on the issue of inadequate human resources, among other shortfalls in capacity. The poor performance of the public sector especially in education, health and other social services has been the subject of a lot of debates in the last few decades. The dominant narrative has attributed implementation failures to corruption, lack of accountability, poor...

-The Indian Express Jharkhand is one of the five states that had advertised a scheme under which doctors could quote their own salaries. The others are Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. New Delhi: Plagued by shortage of specialists in community health centres in rural areas, states have granted huge salary hikes to paediatricians, surgeons and gynaecologists posted in rural areas — in states such as Jharkhand and Tripura, these...

-Hindustan Times It is pertinent to realise that 34 out of 1,000 children born in the country die in the mother’s womb itself. Nine lakh children below the age of five die much before they can comprehend the meaning of independent India and approximately 19 crore people in the country are compelled to sleep on an empty stomach. The history of the nation won’t record the names of Shikha, Manasi or Parul...

  Released in May this year, a study by Save the Children has found that if you are an adolescent girl living in the country, then you are most likely to be afraid about being harassed outside your homes viz. in public places. Entitled WINGS 2018 - World of India's Girls: A study on the perception of girls’ safety in public spaces, the study shows that nearly one-third of teenage girls surveyed...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A panel of doctors has called for changes to the rules banning prenatal sex determination, warning they are depriving rural populations of easy access to the point-of-care ultrasound scans (pocus) needed to diagnose and treat critically ill patients. Doctors associated with the Jan Swasthya Sahyog, which runs a rural hospital in Chhattisgarh, have recommended technology and better policing to improve access to the scans and curb their misuse...