A recent study published in the prestigious science journal 'PLOS One' (August 2014) shows that Central programmes like National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), and state-level initiatives like Yeshasvini health insurance scheme (Karnataka), Vajpayee Aarogyasri health insurance scheme (Karnataka), Rajiv Aarogyasri scheme (Andhra Pradesh), Chief Minister's Insurance Scheme for Life Saving Treatment (Tamil Nadu) etc. did little to reduce the financial burden arising out of...

-Down to Earth The fracas over India's refusal to meet the deadline on trade facilitation exposes rich nations' double standards NOTHING HAS exposed the double standards at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) than the current uproar over the implementation of two agreements at the global trade policing organisation. One, termed Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes, protects the food security concerns of millions of the poor and the livelihood of millions of...

-The Hindu Business Line   Most Indians are not aware of, or responsive to, the issue. For this, the media is squarely responsible The Ministry of Environment and Forests is now the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Including climate change as a key component in the title of the ministry is all very well, but how do we envisage taking climate change and its everyday implications to the masses? A 2011 Yale...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision to dismantle the Planning Commission has led to revelations from some of the body's former stalwarts about past attempts to reform the Soviet-era institution that were repeatedly thwarted, culminating in a tense farewell for Manmohan Singh last May. The panel that has steered India's economic management and vision for 64 years without any constitutional mandate has needed radical surgeries for years but was...

-The Business Standard Agrarian crisis in the state appears as much a failure of planning as the result of a shortage of rain On a dry and cloudless day this month, Balbir Krishna Ingde sat by the Ujjani Dam in the Krishna basin, one of Maharashtra's largest irrigation projects, and confronted the problem of scarcity amid presumed abundance. "The water is filling up the reservoir. If only they could release it into the...