Opening more medical colleges is not the solution to India’s chronic shortage of doctors in the rural areas.  India is the largest supplier of foreign medical graduates to the United States and the United Kingdom. Yet, its own rural areas have remained chronically deprived of professional doctors. The historical antecedents of these shortages could be traced to a landmark health policy document, the Bhore Committee Report of 1946. That report...

A known enemy might be better than over-zealous friends. The high-pressure campaign by civil society activists for the candidature of former cop Kiran Bedi as chief information commissioner may hurt her prospects with government wary of the fierce lobbying. The aggressive campaign to rope in activists and celebrities to back Bedi is seen as a bid to force the government's hand over the appointment which is to be finalised through...

A UN Habitat publication warns that inequalities and worsening informal settlements (read slums) could lead to widespread violence and chaos in the cities and towns of the world. The newly-released report titled “Planning Sustainable Cities: Global Report on Human Settlements 2009” says that with almost 200,000 new dwellers flooding into the world cities and towns each day, there is an urgent need to check the mushrooming of such settlements. The...

The United Nations Development Programme-sponsored 2009 Human Development Report on migration, “Overcoming Barriers: Human mobility and Development” has been widely acknowledged as a path-breaking study on human movement. Shattering the many myths around migration, the report concludes that most migration is in fact beneficial, and calls for supporting policies to ease barriers to free movement. Senior Assistant Country Director, UNDP, K. Seeta Prabhu. discusses the report with The Hindu For...

“Imperative to prepare a dependable list for West Bengal”  KOLKATA: The inclusion of names in West Bengal’s Below Poverty Line (BPL) list should not be determined by political considerations but by economic benchmark, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Wednesday. “The list must be prepared on the basis of one’s economic status and poverty and not on the basis of political considerations,” Mr. Bhattacharjee told a workshop organised by the...