-Livemint.com Centre is soon going to issue a revised set of Guidelines to address current challenges faced by the crop insurance scheme, says Ashish Bhutani, joint secretary at the agriculture ministry New Delhi: The prime minister’s flagship crop insurance scheme, which has seen an impressive rise in coverage and sum assured since its launch in 2016, is facing a number of challenges that are delaying claim settlements for farmers, a senior agriculture...

-The Indian Express The state Cabinet on Tuesday ratified the draft medical policy, which, among others, proposes a standard treatment guideline covering all hospitals to ensure 'rationale, effective and affordable treatment'. Thiruvananthapuram: In an effort to ensure that all children below the age of five are immunised, the Left Front government in Kerala has made vaccination certificate mandatory for admission to class-I from the next academic session. Health Minister K K Shailaja...

-Frontline.in Despite its deeply flawed neoliberal perspective, Economic Survey 2017-18 is rich in detail, has many useful analytical discussions at different levels of aggregation, and would serve as a useful resource for students and scholars. When Arvind Subramanian, the present Chief Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance who took office way back in October 2014, presented his first Economic Survey, the one for 2014-15, there was considerable novelty on offer, at...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In a bid to cleanse politics of criminal elements, the Election Commission has backed banning politicians from contesting polls if charges are framed in cases punishable by at least five years in jail with the caveat that cases should have been registered six months prior to elections. The EC has asked the Supreme Court to direct the Centre to amend the law and its affidavit states...

-The Hindu The National Health Protection Scheme is disconnected from primary care. It also needs to be scaled up It is unusual for a health programme to become the most prominent feature of a Union Budget. The previous government missed the bus when it failed to implement the recommendations of the High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage (2011). Yet, those recommendations resonate in the Budget of 2018, with commitment to universal...