Economics
Spending for a healthy India – Tamil podcast on higher GDP expenditure for universal healthcare
The Hindu published an editorial titled Spending for a healthy India on March 9, 2012 highlighting the importance of tax-based universal healthcare by 2017. That should be the goal of the Twelfth Plan. The aim is to reduce out-of-pocket spending on healthcare that is pushing many Indians into poverty – simply because a massive health [...]
Universal Health Coverage for India – Insurance, Medicines and human resources
The report of the High Level Experts Group (HLEG) instituted by the Planning Commission to provide Universal Health Coverage for India has many key features that need extensive debate. Disappointingly, such discussions are not taking place, at the level of political parties, Trade Unions, Civil Society organisations and even the media. The Hindu has been [...]
Pensioner Kanani: a welfare watchdog in Tamil Nadu
I like Pensioner Kanani for the high-quality service that it provides to retirees. The mainstream media is too preoccupied with breaking news, political games and pseudo-events to cover the retirement sector. One can imagine that they are also less interested in this population sub-set because pensioners are not aggressive consumers, and are therefore unattractive to [...]
A sobering report on India’s poverty from OPHI
Poverty talk is mostly confined these days to prime time television, where contrived debates fuelled by puffed-up anchors and venal politicians fill the gap between commercials. In the case of newspapers, they minimally take notice of the problem. Their so-called process journalism mostly ignores chronic poverty, as it does everything else chronic — lack of [...]
In a nation of billionaires, children with crippled legs
During the recent IPL matches held in Chennai, there were middle class citizens who thought nothing about forking out Rs. 1,000 each to watch what has been proved to be a scandal-ridden spectacle that passes for sport. The prosperity pipeline of the IPL is so constructed, that that thirsty spectators had to pay five rupees [...]
India at Copenhagen: What it must do
I believe the following are key issues that the Government of India and the State Governments must address quickly, to make a convincing case about our intentions to reduce carbon emissions: 1. Massively invest in solar energy – this will help meet the target of 20,000 MW of production, as well as take electricity to [...]
Now, Dr. Manmohan Singh and UPA Co, get down to work !
Now that the 79-member Ministry of the UPA is in place, Dr. Manmohan Singh and his colleagues would do well to get down to work. Such is the level of degradation and non-performance in various Ministries, that it would take his Ministries 22-hour work days to even get the various policies initiated during the last [...]
The oil squeeze: fertilizer prices begin to bite
The impact of high oil prices has begun to affect agriculture in a fundamental way. Fertilizer, on which much of the intensive agriculture of the world has come to depend, is now both scarce and more expensive for many farmers. Combined with the decline in production of grains in some countries, this is very bad [...]
Nokia and service in India
Nokia is seen as a pioneering company in mobile phone technology, but I have come to the distressing conclusion that European values are nonexistent in its India operations, although this is one of the biggest markets for phone companies. To put it simply, Nokia has “Finlandized” its own operations in India. It is bad enough that mobile phones [...]
The end of ‘cheap’ food?
Slowly but surely, politics in this country is acquiring a foundation in contemporary issues, rather than one of mere rhetoric, alliances and muscle power. It is not that the shift is sharp, or that all core issues are being addressed — education and healthcare access are glaring examples – but there is hope that the reality of economics will [...]
