Conditional cash transfers are necessary but not sufficient for improving health. Good government-funded health care is essential, as are schemes which address social determinants of health. The march of capitalism, with its reduced emphasis on public spending, while improving many national economies has also widened the gap between the rich and the poor. For millions of Indians, hunger is routine, malnutrition rife, employment insecure, health care expensive and livelihoods are under...

The State's public education system faces the threat of dilution from several quarters. WHEN a national law is finally in place to ensure that not a single child is out of school, there is a growing concern in Kerala, which already has a well-established, though languishing, public education system, about the United Democratic Front (UDF) government's moves to sanction a large number of private, unaided schools. The decision to issue no...

-The Economic Times The Parliamentary Standing Committee on finance has questioned the government's move to introduce a right to food bill when it did not have a single, widely-accepted definition of the poor. The "criteria of identification of the poor remains nebulous," the Yashwant Sinha-headed committee has observed. The proposed food security bill, seen as the largest such legislation anywhere in the world, hinges on the definition of the poor. The...

-The Indian Express   Financial inclusion in India seems to be far from inclusive. Out of a total of 5,165 new branches opened in 2011, only 21.86 per cent are rural branches, says a study. A growth rate of more than 700 per cent in urban Customer Service Points (CSPs) over the last year points towards the latest trend of urbanisation among Business Correspondents (BCs). Although there is not much difference between growth...

Rural households having a member earning more than Rs 10,000 a month or anyone serving in a government or government-aided organisation or owning a landline phone will not be included in the below poverty line (BPL) category in the new poverty census being conducted by states. However, the new census, which also includes questions about religion and castes, will compulsory include rural households without shelter, destitutes living on alms, manual scavengers,...