-Hindustan Times After Tamil Nadu’s pioneering Amma canteens, many states have started community kitchens, such as Karnataka’s Indira Canteens. This is a welcome development. The first coverage of the recently inaugurated “Indira canteens” in Karnataka that I noticed were two reports on television channels. Both were poking fun (justifiably) at Rahul Gandhi’s goofy speech at the launch. Sadly though, neither commented on the rationale or importance of the Karnataka government’s initiative. This...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Income tax exemptions worth hundreds of crores have been given to Hospitals claiming to be charitable institutes, but they may be doing little or no charity, according to a recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General. CAG has asked for measurable parameters to assess the extent of charitable activities by hospital trusts availing tax exemptions as the public exchequer could be losing crores without...

-The Telegraph Calcutta: Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the chairman and managing director of biotechnology company Biocon, today said incidents like the Gorakhpur hospital child deaths should trigger the debate "why we spend only 1 per cent of our GDP on health care". Mazumdar-Shaw, who was awarded DSc (honoris causa) by Presidency University, said: "A very, very worrying trend in India is that we spend only 1 per cent of our GDP on health care....

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: As the death of 23 children in a single day in Gorakhpur's Baba Raghav Das Medical College (BRDMC) grabs national headlines, a sharp cut by the Aditya Nath Yogi government in the budgetary allocation for medical education this year is raising questions. That's because this is the head under which the BRDMC, like other state-run colleges, receives funds. The budgetary allocation for 14 such medical colleges and...

-The Indian Express Gorakhpur was only the acute manifestation of the chronic malady that ails our health system Outrage is a natural reaction to the terrible tragedy that cruelly crushed the lives of many innocent children in Gorakhpur. However, outrage is a wasted emotion if it is not accompanied by honest introspection to identify all contributory causes and followed by a cluster of corrective actions. The deaths of these children were caused...