-The Hindu An analysis of the NITI Aayog’s ‘Healthy States, Progressive India’ report released on June 25 shows that the usage of estimated figures in place of reported numbers, to calculate certain health indicators, has adversely impacted the final index score of certain States while boosting that of others. Skewed result The report had used an estimated number of births and deliveries to calculate two key health outcome indicators — “full immunisation coverage”...

-Outlook The government got Rs 65 crore by selling data of approximately 25 crore vehicle registrations and 15 crore driving licences. However, is selling this data legal? Is the data actually ‘public’? Isn't it intrusion on privacy? On July 8, the Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari responded to an unstarred question by Congress Rajya Sabha MP Husain Dalwai on details of data sold by the government “by providing access...

  During budget presentations, budget documents, which are provided, carry updated data and information related to various departments and ministries of the Central Government such as on revenues, expenditures, deficits etc. Recently economists like Dr. Rathin Roy and Prof. Jayati Ghosh have expressed concerns about the Ministry of Finance for not uploading updated and appropriate budgetary data and figures on the website www.indiabudget.gov.in following the 2019-20 Union Budget presentation by the...

-The Hindu The focus is on preparing residents of 1,517 habitations to take the test by 2020 KALPETTA (Kerala): After making two successful forays into the tribal hamlets of Wayanad, Kerala’s State Literacy Mission (SLM) is all set to earn the ‘100% literate’ badge for the outlier region, which has the highest tribal population among all districts. Tribal pockets are among a handful of areas where full literacy remains elusive in the...

-The Hindu Situation is the most bleak in low-income countries, says Lancet report “Oral diseases present a major global public health burden, affecting 3.5 billion people worldwide, yet oral health has been largely ignored by the global health community,” noted a new Lancet Series on Oral Health. The report warns that with a treat-over-prevent model, modern dentistry has failed to combat the global challenge of oral diseases, giving rise to calls for the...