-Down to Earth The focus must be on safeguarding women and girls’ reproductive health. Smaller families can be achieved by ensuring gender equality, empowering women The law proposed by the Uttar Pradesh Law Commission on July 7, 2021 on two-child policy compels couples to limit their families through a series of incentives and disincentives. There is no evidence, however, that coercive policies can truly reduce fertility. Two-child policies are known to disproportionately impact...

-Business Standard Oxfam India's inequality report draws attention to the county's unequal healthcare story hit further by Covid-19 When it comes to healthcare, people in general category are better off than Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) households; Hindus are better off than Muslims; the rich do better than the poor; men are better off than women; and the urban population fares better than the rural. These are the findings of Oxfam...

-The Hindu The Uttar Pradesh government should understand that evidence backs the principle of informed free choice Many of us working in the field of public health and social development have been taken aback, if not downright shocked, by the recently announced draft Uttar Pradesh Population (Control, Stabilization and Welfare) Bill, 2021 that focuses exclusively on making a two-child norm a law, specifying various incentives and penalties for contravention. The burgeoning negative...

-The Hindu Business Line The development economist, now part of Tamil Nadu’s Economic Advisory Council, says that public expenditure on health is just 0.6 per cent of the state domestic product, one of the lowest ratios among Indian states * Universal quality education, health care and social security are still distant goals * A well-designed system of emergency cash transfers would be quite useful in this situation of recurrent crises, which may last...

The rise in COVID-19 daily new cases and daily new deaths compelled many state governments to impose local level lockdowns during April-May 2021. As of 20th April, 2021, partial lockdowns were noticed in 10 states across the country and complete lockdown was imposed in Delhi. As of 8th May, 2021, nearly the entire country was under complete lockdown as a result of either partial lockdowns and night curfews or complete...