There is a complicated relationship between abortion as such and the selective abortion of female foetuses. This dilemma is one with which the women’s movement in India has been grappling since the late 1980s. In my discussion of this dilemma, I would like to move away completely from Satyamev Jayate, the television programme, (on which a discussion has been initiated by Shohini Ghosh on kafila.org). In any case, there the...

The Union government has decided to intensify its operations against the CPI (Maoist) by launching the third and fourth phase of its multi-winged, coordinated stratagem to squeeze the expanse of what the Naxalites now refer to as the ‘ring of fire' (part of the red corridor). However, several ministries are not extending any cooperation. Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh raised the issue in his letter to Prime Minister Manmohan...

The ICDS' plight is symptomatic of the problems plaguing the Union government's flagship schemes for the poor all over the country.   INDIA may be the only country in the world where we describe the ensuring of the basic socio-economic rights of the people in terms of “flagship schemes” that are seen as the benevolent contribution of governments. One problem with this approach is that the delivery of basic services is...

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...

Over 55,000 women die due to child birth in India every year. Of the total children born in one year, a mind boggling 13 lakh die before they reach their first birthdays, most of them within a few weeks of entering this world. Another indicator that the world watches is how many children cannot survive beyond five years of age. In India every year, over 16 lakh under-5 years children...