-The Hindu Business Line Chennai: National Health Protection Scheme (NHPS), a national insurance scheme that will be effective from April 1, is likely to provide insurance cover to 70 per cent of the population. By this scheme, each family will get health cover up to ?1 lakh as opposed to ?30,000 under the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), the current health insurance scheme. An additional ?30,000 will be provided for senior citizens...

-The Hindu Business Line Fails to ease distress caused by demonetisation’ New Delhi: Terming the Union Budget 2017-18, presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, as detrimental to the realisation of the welfare State, as enshrined in the Constitution, civil rights organisations said it “fails to respond to the present situation of distress and unemployment especially aggravated by demonetisation.” “The Budget seems to be perpetuating unemployment, hunger and malnutrition,” said a release by the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India's government-funded health insurance schemes have increased patients' access to hospitalisation but failed to reduce their households' personal out-of-pocket healthcare expenses, the most comprehensive review of the schemes so far has found. The review by public health analysts has found increases ranging from 12 per cent to 244 per cent in hospital-based services across the country since the schemes were launched a decade ago. But there is no...

-The Economic Times PUNE: Farmers are highly disappointed with Budget 2017 alleging that the Prime Minister has not done enough to fulfill his pre-election promises made to the farming community. The announcement of increasing farm credit to 10 lakh crore may not help much the small and marginalised farmers, who are outside the banking network. "About 60% of the farmers are outside the banking system. They depend upon the informal sector for loans....

-The Hindu The interaction between people and land is as old as human evolution. When early hunter-gatherers started to settle down in the Neolithic transition and practise agriculture, they began to change their relationship with land in a major way. Starting with the Holocene, approximately 11,500 years ago, many plants were domesticated for agriculture. These and the associated social and technological changes led to dense human settlements that then paved the...