-Down to Earth Bihar needs to strengthen and enhance capacities of Gram Panchayats to realise the gains of a Decentralised Planning Imagine yourself living for ages in a remote village inside a dense forest in the 21st century. Basic amenities such as proper roads, safe drinking water, healthcare and education facilities are missing.  The nearest primary school and health centre is located at a distance of seven kilometres. You have to trek through...

In the month of April this year, there has been an unprecedented upsurge in daily new cases and daily new deaths in the country due to Covid-19. States, which reported large increases in daily new cases and daily new deaths, are Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, to name but a few.   Data accessed from https://www.covid19india.org/, which is a crowdsourced platform and an independent aggregator of daily Covid-19 figures and...

-The Hindu Business Line Kerala’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the subject of international conversation about public health systems. Piloting Kerala’s fight against the pandemic is the State’s Health Minister and CPI(M)’s Central Committee member KK Shailaja who speaks exclusively to BusinessLine about the criticality of publicly-run healthcare and how the need of the hour is to nationalise the system. Excerpts: * What are the lessons to be learnt from...

-The Indian Express The central leadership led by President Xi was quick in acknowledging this effort of the “first line of defence”. It made provisions for the benefit of the workers like subsidies, provision of health equipment, insurance, publicity, and other institutional support. In his address to the nation on April 20, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made exhortations for the youth to form small committees to ensure adherence to COVID-19 restrictions. He...

-Jan Swasthya Abhiyan Statement on Missing Health System element of the Stimulus Package dated 3rd June, 2020 The strengthening of the public system needs a shift towards pro-people orientation. There is, therefore, a need to ensure a genuine bottom up, need-based Decentralised Planning, implementation and monitoring, with strong involvement of communities. Please click here to read the entire statement. ...