Here's good news for pregnant women in Madhya Pradesh's rural areas. A free service to take them to a hospital for delivery is set to be extended to all 50 districts of the state that has a high maternal mortality ratio. The 24 x 7 call centres under the Janani Express - the ambulance service for pregnant women - are currently available only in 10 districts. "We are extending the services to...
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MGNREGA status report | In the shadow of Maoism by Liz Mathew
Madvi Madka owns 4ha of land in Chingavaram in the Sukum block in central India. The district in which the block is located has become infamous after 6 April, killing of 76 policemen by the Maoists. This is the ground zero of the war between the Indian state and the Maoists, and Madka, who owns 4ha of land—often left fallow because there wasn’t enough water for irrigation—here used to make...
More »That Healthy Feeling by SL Rao
Monica Das Gupta is a senior social scientist at the World Bank. Her field research in Punjab, when she was at the National Council of Applied Economic Research, established that sex differentials in child mortality in rural Punjab persisted despite relative wealth, socio-economic development including rapid universalization of female education, fertility decline, and mortality decline. Amartya Sen’s writings drew attention to female foeticide and infanticide in Asia that led to...
More »Funds fail to draw doctors to villages by Subodh Varma
As the country awaits another central government Budget, there is a growing demand for more financial muscle on several fronts. But, is throwing money at complex problems really a solution? A look at the progress of a crucial program of the government, the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), indicates that money can’t buy everything. One of the biggest bottlenecks facing policy-makers is that of medical personnel. Recently released data by...
More »In report to High Court, child rights body slams Asha Kiran by Utkarsh Anand
With 35 deaths reported in 2009 at the Asha Kiran home for the mentally challenged, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) submitted a report in the High Court citing deplorable medical attention, poor administration, lack of adequate staff and unhygienic conditions as reasons for the deaths. Placing the report before a Division Bench headed by Chief Justice A P Shah on Wednesday as a PIL on the...
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