-The Hindu Trust in official statistics is vital for democracy — the new policy must avoid centralisation David Spiegelhalter, president of Royal Statistical Society in the U.K., gave a most unusual presidential address in 2017. Instead of talking about esoteric statistical techniques, he talked about declining trust in numbers in a post-truth society bombarded by fake news and alternative facts. He recommended to the statistical community that the best way of inspiring...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre's proposed rates of reimbursement to hospitals for various medical procedures under the National Health Protection Scheme are low and unsustainable and could compromise patient safety, an organisation representing hospitals has told the government. The Association of Healthcare Providers of India (AHPI) has said the proposed rates are in general significantly lower than the costs that large tertiary-care hospitals typically incur on medical procedures.     The NHPS, announced...

-Hindustan Times Rather than feeling ignored by the mainstream media or disgruntled by the ‘biased’ coverage, Dalits are using digital space to publish news and opinions. On December 31, when violence spread in Pune on the 200th anniversary of the Bhima- Koregaon battle, it was the first time many people in other parts of the country got to know about the encounter between the army of Peshwa Bajirao II, and a...

-The Hindu Anand Joshi, a rural development fellow under CM’s programme, helped bring State Transport buses, and electricity after 70 years to a remote village in Amravati Mumbai: Anand Joshi (26), an MBA from MIT, Pune open university is reverently referred to as khambewala saab in Bulumgavan village in Amravati district. He finds the tag both daunting and amusing: “They call me that because of the electric poles that stand in their...

-TheWire.in In India, caste and practices related to caste are inescapable in the waste-management conundrum. There’s a wonderful book called Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay about England in bygone days when it was still heavily rural and agricultural labour was the life of thousands of people. The recent release of the Swachh Survekshan rankings of India’s cleanest cities suggests someone should write a book called Ask the People Who Pick Up...