Scroll.in In a recent survey conducted by Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in partnership with the Centre for Social and Economic Progress, King’s India Institute and Royal Holloway, University of London, we set out to examine in greater depth how Indian citizens view health. This five-state survey is the first systematic interrogation of electoral perceptions around health in India. Between March-April 2022, we interviewed 1,500 voters across five Indian states...

KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

P.V. Satheesh, founder and Executive Director of the Deccan Development Society passed away on 19 March, 2023. Periyapatna Venkatasubbaiah Satheesh – P.V. Satheesh to friends – was born in Mysore in 1945. He studied mass communication and television production at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication and the Film and Television Institute of India. He joined Doordarshan as a senior producer and worked on programming related to rural development and...

The Wire In a country like India where inequality is so prominent, a development scheme can come a cropper if it lacks inclusivity. The Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) was launched in 1993 to enable parliamentarians to directly contribute towards meeting the development demands of their constituency or state. Despite many deficiencies plaguing the scheme, it stood out mainly on account of the principles of social justice and its...

A coalition of civil society activits has criticized the Union Budget 2023-24 for reducing government spending on the social sector by a massive amount. The economic crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic was borne disproportionately by those at the bottom of the pyramid and in this context spending on social protection schemes such as the Public Distribution System, anganwadis, pensions and MGNREGA is especially important. But the Government of India has...