-The Hindu Making hospitalisation affordable will spell relief, but there is no alternative to strengthening primary health care In 2011, a high-level expert group on universal health coverage reckoned that nearly 70% of Government health spending should go to primary health care. The National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 also advocated allocating resources of up to two-thirds or more to primary care as it enunciated the goal of achieving “the highest possible level...

-The Hindu Both human rights and wildlife rights groups have not used the Forest Rights Act as a conservation tool On February 13, the Supreme Court ordered the eviction of more than 10 lakh Adivasis and other forest dwellers from forestland across 17 States. The petitioners, mainly wildlife NGOs, had demanded that State Governments evict those forest dwellers whose claims over traditional forestland under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers...

-The Hindu Experts and activists say the complex problem cannot be prevented merely by monetary handouts meant to retain girls in school Kolkata: Dipali, Manju and Sahanara (names changed) were all beneficiaries of West Bengal’s most talked about conditional cash transfer scheme, Kanyashree. However, despite being beneficiaries of the scheme, which according to the State Government has 56.09 lakh beneficiaries so far, these three young women were trafficked between 2016-18. Of the three trafficking...

-The Indian Express October-December 2018 is also the second consecutive quarter where growth in gross value added (GVA) from agriculture has been lower in nominal than in real terms. The country’s farm sector output may have grown by just 2.7 per cent year-on-year in October-December 2018, the lowest in 11 quarters. But what should worry the NDA Government more than the low increase in “real” terms (i.e. at constant prices) is...

-Newsclick.in New GDP numbers show the deep agrarian crisis and an economy in doldrums, while unemployment continues to grow. Advance estimates of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the current year 2018-19, and estimates for the third quarter (Sept-Dec 2018) show unmistakeable signs of a slowing economy, despite the flawed method of calculating these estimates. The country’s economy will grow by 7% in the current year which will end this March. Last year...