- Deepanshu Mohan, Soumya Marri, Bilquis Calcuttawala, Malhaar Kasodekar, Aniruddh Bhaskaran and Hemang Sharma A pre-budget deep dive by the Centre for New Economic Studies (CNES) Infosphere team has come up with some interesting takeaways. The analysis has looked at past macroeconomic and budget trends to set the tone for Budget 2023-24. They do this by looking at capital and revenue expenditure, sectoral analysis of budget expenditure and a scheme-wise allocation...

-The Telegraph An important cause of this new epidemic is the aggressive marketing and the rising consumption of ultra-processed foods — usually high in salt, sugar and bad fats A report published in BMJ Global Health has revealed that obesity and other conditions related to weight are costing India around 1 per cent of its gross domestic product annually. Overweight and obesity make up the most common lifestyle ailment in India and...

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...

-Hindustan Times This entails addressing prevailing systemic deficiencies along with managing the added burden of Covid-19. India’s health sector requires a two-fold intervention by the government. The extraordinary situation created by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has exposed the vulnerabilities of our fragile health-care system, demands an equally extraordinary intervention by the government. The expectation from the Union Budget 2021-22 is for the central government to lead from the front in the health...