-TheWire.in When the data tells us insurance-based health schemes have not reduced out-of-pocket expenditure for the poor, Jaitley’s budgetary focus should have been on boosting public provision of health care. Despite sustained economic growth for over two decades, improvements in health indicators in India have not kept pace. By 2015, India was able to meet only four out of the ten health targets set under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for that...

Although there is sufficient data and evidence available in the public domain to argue whether there has been halving of poverty between 1990 and 2015, the same cannot be said with conviction about the halving of hunger—one of the targets set under the erstwhile Millennium Development Goals framework (replaced recently by SDGs). This is because the recently released data by the National Family Health Survey-4 (conducted in 2015-16) and the...

-The Times of India • ​States like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka are already using some of the fortified products. • According to health experts, more than 50% of child mortality under five years of age can be attributed to Malnutrition. In a concerted effort to tackle under-nutrition in the country, the goverment is planning to provide fortified food products like wheat, rice, salt, and milk in schools' midday meal and...

-The Indian Express The budget is an opportunity for government to address the simmering discontent and disillusion in rural India. The first advance estimates of GDP growth, at 2011-12 constant prices, put the growth for FY16 at 7.6 per cent over the previous year. This is the highest growth rate in the first four years of the forgotten 12th Five-Year Plan. No wonder this makes the Narendra Modi-led NDA government somewhat...

-BangaloreMirror.com Illiteracy, child marriage, poor dietary habits are the biggest hurdles in bringing change Three-year old Shivaranjini weighs nine kg, while her sister who is three years older weighs 12 kg. Both are at least one kg lower than the minimum recommended weight for their age. But they are not exceptions. Weak and underweight children, all bony hands and feet and nearly visible rib cages, are a common sight here. It's lunch time...