-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Less than two of every 100 senior citizens in India are covered under public and private health insurance. This even as the population of elderly people is growing significantly and is forecast to hit almost 300 million in around two decades. The elderly population, aged more than 60 years, is projected to constitute 18.3% of the total population in 2050, up from 7.7% in 2010, according...

-Down to Earth Health experts blame Centre's over-emphasis on women's sterilisation for the Chhattisgarh tragedy THERE WAS nothing right about the sterilisation camp held on November 8 in Chhattisgarh's Takhatpur block of Bilaspur district. An overambitious government doctor-with unsterilised equipment and virtually no manpower-set out to conduct laparoscopic tubectomy on 83 women in an abandoned private hospital. The mass sterilisation led to the death of 13 women and left others critically ill. They were...

-Press Release from Centre for Budget Analysis (CBGA) and Jan Awaaz New Delhi, 29 November 2014: There have been a number of media reports recently around possible cuts in Union Budget allocations for the current fiscal 2014-15 in case of social sector programmes, i.e. reductions in allocations in the Revised Estimates (RE) for 2014-15 as compared to the Budget Estimates (BE) that were made in July this year. This issue deserves...

-The Indian Express Prime Minister Narendra Modi has repeatedly promised India "maximum governance". But to get there, the high costs and ineffectiveness of frontline service providers need to be addressed. Take elementary school teachers, for instance. "Complete rest in comfortable conditions" is the description a rather candid elementary education cluster resource centre coordinator (CRCC) in Bihar gave his own job. And it's not just him, it is also how the CRCC describes...

-The Hindu To meet the fiscal deficit target for this year, the Central government is brutally slashing social sector allocations but is keeping expenditure cuts for the physical infrastructure sectors at a minimum. This re-aligning of plan outlays across sectors by the Finance Ministry is in line with the government's priorities. The Narendra Modi government views infrastructure spending as growth-enhancing and an essential element of its plans for reviving the economy. The...