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Health workers at a camp in Palghar (Image courtesy: Team Bhopoli)
As the second wave of Covid-19 seems to recede from the big cities, the focus is on the rural side. That is where more and more cases are coming up and that is where health infrastructure is especially weak. What needs to be done?
Can gram panchayats act as the first line of defence? To strengthen them and to provide grants to them, the finance ministry on Wednesday released Rs 8,923.8 crore to 25 states, following a recommendation of the ministry of panchayati raj. Also, the health ministry issued SOPs on Covid-19 containment and management for the countryside including awareness campaigns. Among other measures, its guidelines direct states to open 30-bed makeshift Covid care centres in panchayats, depute AYUSH doctors and community health officials and conduct rapid antigen tests.
Aadhaar and surveillance as governance
BOOK EXCERPT: How Aadhaar initiates a new era where ID systems would create personalised profiles of beneficiaries to ultimately determine whether they (otherwise eligible) even deserve to avail the said benefits
Shivangi Narayan | May 20, 2021
(Imaging: Ashish Asthana)
Shivangi Narayan’s ‘Surveillance as Governance: Aadhaar, Big Data in Governance’ is a valuable addition to the literature on the new identification system that is changing the architecture of state welfare schemes while also creating new structures of surveillance.
This book is a humble attempt to look at how the needs of information of the ruling bodies have led to the development of identification systems across history. It tries to understand how Aadhaar is a break from the older system where the role of ID systems was limited to identifying the beneficiary correctly, and initiates a new era where ID systems would create personalised profiles of beneficiaries to u
Former Civil Servants Slam Modi Govt for Mishandling Second Wave of COVID-19 Pandemic
In an open letter to the prime minister, the signatories have urged Modi to take immediate steps including free universal vaccination for all, ramp up testing, and stop expenditures on Central Vista.
Family members of COVID-19 patients wait to fill their empty cylinders with medical oxygen outside an oxygen filling centre, as demand for the gas rises due to spike in coronavirus cases, in Lucknow, Friday, April 23, 2021. Photo: PTI
Rights5 hours ago
New Delhi: A group of senior retired civil servants including a former Union cabinet secretary, former national security adviser and former Union secretaries for health, agriculture, external affairs, social justice, coal, IT and other ministries have written an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing displeasure at the seemingly “casual attitude” of the central government to the magnitude of the COVID-19 situation and its impli
Daily recoveries outnumber daily new cases for the 6th consecutive day
GN Bureau | May 19, 2021
Health minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan inspecting the newly installed oxygen plant and the construction progress of new prefabricated COVID Blocks, at Safdarjung Hospital, in New Delhi on Wednesday
India’s devastating second wave seems to be waning, as the number of daily cases remained below 3 lakh for the third consecutive day on Wednesday and the daily positivity rate declined to 13.31%. About 20 lakh tests were conducted in 24 hours, which is a new record, even as above 64 lakh beneficiaries in the 18-44 age group have been vaccinated.
Also, daily recoveries outnumber daily new cases for the sixth consecutive day. As many as 3,89,851 recoveries were registered in the 24 hours to Wednesday morning, according to an official bulletin.