-Live Mint High on hype, the budget speech of the Union finance minister today is merely a statement of account. As India’s economy diversifies—with the private sector playing an increasingly important role—this annual feature has assumed much lower salience. Not only have fiscal policies lost the space they enjoyed in earlier years, even major policy announcements are restricted to being mere statements of account. Examples from other arenas include “activism” on...

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is likely to run into a debate on public health policy after the Planning Commission moved to nix a proposal to include healthcare in the list of public entitlements such as education and food. Central to the proposal—initiated by a high-level expert group (HLEG) headed by K. Srinath Reddy, a leading advocate of preventive cardiology and president of the Public Health Foundation of India—was the...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...

-The Times of India Free medicines to all patients visiting any government health facility across the country could soon be a reality with the health ministry ready to roll out a nearly Rs 30,000 crore 'free-medicines-for-all' scheme with the PMO's strong backing. The free medicine initiative along with an expansion of the National Rural Health Mission to urban areas, a more district-oriented approach and implementation of recommendations of the K Srinath Reddy...

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh is seeking doubling of funds for water supply and sanitation programmes to Rs 20,000 crore in the upcoming budget, arguing that it is high time the Centre focused on this neglected sector.  Ramesh, who holds the additional charge of the ministry of drinking water and sanitation, has indicated that he is unwilling to settle for anything short of Rs 16,000 crore. The finance ministry has, so...