In the remote Raghopur block of Vaishali district in Bihar, the primary health centre (PHC) is supposed to be operational 24X7, with the medical officer in charge (MOIC) running the out-patient department between 8am and 12.30pm. On 8 May, the MOIC reached the PHC at 10.30am and left after an hour. According to patients, this was not a random event. Most of the 20-strong crowd awaiting medical attention is turned away....

The Union budget estimates the nominal rate of growth for the Indian economy to be 12.5 per cent during the current fiscal. While it is impossible to figure out the manner in which this number was arrived at, the government has predicted further that the inflation-adjusted real growth rate for the same year will be eight per cent. Simple arithmetic requires that the difference between the nominal and real growth...

With the continuous high prices of pulses a major worry, the Centre has reoriented its strategy from this kharif season, with farmers being given incentives to go for mechanisation through custom hiring of tractors, ridge and furrow planters, and Rotavators (rotary tillers). Farmers are also being encouraged to take up inter-cropping, adoption of new technologies, integrated nutrient management, better seeds, and drip and sprinkler irrigation. Farmers in 60,000 identified villages in major...

Chanchala Devi always wanted a house. Not a mud-and-stick hut, like her current home in this desolate village in the mineral-rich, corruption-corroded state of Jharkhand, but a proper brick-and-mortar house. When she heard that a government program for the poor would give her about $700 to build that house, she applied immediately. As an impoverished day labourer from a downtrodden caste, she was an ideal candidate for the grant. Yet she...

Furious debates among policymakers about the proposed national food security law largely revolve around its financial repercussions. The Planning Commission is finally coming around to accepting the Tendulkar Committee’s estimates of 37.2 per cent BPL population or 8.5 crore BPL households. The fiscal burden in implementing the food security law for 37.5 per cent BPL population, with each household being provided 35 kg food grains, is estimated to be Rs...