-The Indian Express Whether it is the Budget, the Swaminathan formula or the BJP manifesto, none of them has quite defined what really constitutes “cost of production”. And therein lies the nub. The Union Budget for 2018-19 has promised to fix minimum support prices (MSP) for crops to guarantee farmers at least 50 per cent returns on production costs. This is quite similar to the original recommendation of the M S Swaminathan-headed...
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I-Day launch goal for National Health Protection Scheme, aims to cover 10 crore poor families -Abantika Ghosh
-The Indian Express The ambitious scheme aims to cover over 10 crore “poor and vulnerable” families — an estimated 50 crore individual beneficiaries — with coverage of up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year. The Niti Aayog is working towards a launch on Independence Day of the government’s latest flagship National Health Protection Scheme, which was announced in the Union Budget Thursday. Top officials in the Aayog said that...
More »'Pink' Economy Survey: Adverse sex ratio has led to 'missing' of 63 million women in India
-PTI NEW DELHI: Breaking from past, the Economic Survey for 2017-18 was printed in pink colour as it waded into the problem of gender bias prevalent in India. Indian parents continue to have children until they get the desired number of sons, it said observing that the adverse sex ratio of females to males has led to 63 million "missing" women. The pre-Budget annual document detailing state of economy was in the...
More »Union Budget 2018: Poor diagnosis, wrong medicine -Sourindra Mohan Ghosh & Imrana Qadeer
-The Indian Express The focus in the Union Budget on tertiary healthcare at the cost of primary and secondary healthcare is flawed. A publicly-financed health insurance scheme is no substitute If the past three Union budgets were any indication, this budget’s approach to the health sector should not have surprised anyone. The prescription in the National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 to increase the government’s (Centre and the states together) health expenditure from the...
More »Where's the money, Mr Jaitley? -Jayati Ghosh
-The Indian Express There are grand promises. But the actual increases in budgetary outlays are shockingly low. This government is especially good at optics, at managing public perceptions to persuade people that it is working for them, rather than doing so. So it is no surprise that Arun Jaitley’s pre-election budget speech went on about how much his government cares for the people, the poor, for farmers, for women, for people...
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