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First steps in the journey to universal health care Updated: Updated: February 08, 2021 23:06 IST The lesson of COVID-19 is to go on a steady, incremental path given the weak fund capacities in the backward States Share Article AAA The lesson of COVID-19 is to go on a steady, incremental path given the weak fund capacities in the backward States About 20 years ago, Thailand rolled out universal health coverage for its population at a per capita GDP similar to today’s India. What made this possible was a three decade-long tradition of investing gradually but steadily in public health infr...

Rich Farmers, Global Plots, Local Stupidity It’s an astonishing achievement of this government that it has united a huge and unlikely spectrum of social forces, including some traditional adversaries. The governance of the gulag: Barricading at Singhu border near farmers protest site, in New Delhi, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. Photo: PTI/Kamal Singh Rights05/Feb/2021 Cutting off water and electricity to lakhs of human beings, exposing them to serious health hazards by doing so, having police and paramilitary barricade them into cut-off zones while imposing dangerously insanitary conditions on...

The performance of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Rajasthan was debated for its stupendous performance in the initial years of the scheme, but also for the relative sharp decline after 2010. Based on a large representative primary survey, this paper argues that the decline in performance of this scheme in Rajasthan is not entirely due to the lack of demand. Instead, the supply-driven top-down nature of the programme has led to a "discouraged worker" syndrome with workers showing disinterest in demanding work and passively waiting for availability of NREGS work. Strengthening th...

Utsa Patnaik's critique ("A Critical Look at Some Propositions on Consumption and Poverty", 6 February 2010) of the authors' earlier paper on food and nutrition ("Food and Nutrition in India: Facts and Interpretations", 14 February 2009) does not stand up to scrutiny. She claims that the observed decline in calorie intake at given levels of real per capita expenditure is an illusion due to faulty price indexes, but does not offer any evidence that the consumer price index actually underestimates cost of living increases. Patnaik's "alternative deflator" and "direct poverty lines" are devoid o...

Despite some hits, the Budget has crucial misses Updated: Updated: February 02, 2021 11:18 IST That there is no targeted employment programme to alleviate the immediate crisis is a matter of concern Share Article AAA That there is no targeted employment programme to alleviate the immediate crisis is a matter of concern The Budget, at its simplest, is the government’s tentative income and expenditure statement. Like all financial statements, the devil lies in the fine print. At its broadest, the Budget is a pious statement of the government’s policy and ideological intentions. It is also ...