While welcoming the report of the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for India for its comprehensive vision and many well-conceived recommendations, this article focuses on the conditions needed for its promise to bear fruit. Towards this, it explores the political dimension, which comprises the forces and interests that come into play to shape and reconfigure administrative policy and its implementation.   We are grateful to Anand Zachariah and Susie...

The data show that rural families simply cannot subsist on farm incomes alone There must be a bit of Gandhi in all of us because often our idea of India ultimately boils down to the kisan as the standard bearer of the lakhs of villages that comprise India. Perhaps that is why I tend to look for the signs of transformation in the lives of Indian farmers. The changes in...

-PTI   Reflecting the utmost priority to address farm sector woes, a first-of-its-kind workshop was held on Wednesday at the initiative of President Pratibha Patil where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pitched for raising agriculture output to provide food security to citizens.  At the workshop attended by eight Union ministers, 20 governors, five chief ministers and 37 vice chancellors of agricultural universities, Patil underlined the need for "out-of-the-box" solutions to enhance productivity in rainfed...

In a report released on January 30, and covered by the world’s press the next day, the United Nations has warned of a severe resource crisis that would overtake the world if current trends persist. A growing population and a rise in the number of middle-class consumers will increase the demand for resources so rapidly that even by 2030 the world will need at least 50 per cent more food,...

The recommendations of the Planning Commission’s High Level Expert Group on Access to Universal Healthcare are significant because they make explicit the need to contextualise health within the rights. However, the problem with the report is that it does not ask why many of the same recommendations that were made by previous committees have not been implemented. The HLEG neither recognises the problems, constraints and compulsions at the national, state...