View Articles

Since the cost of drugs comes to about 70 percent of the out of pocket expenditure on health, this becomes a cause of major concern. Because 80 percent of medical care in our country is in private sector and advanced tertiary care is mainly coming up in corporate sector, the cost concerns are increasing. As per the National Health Policy document 2017, every year 6.3 crore people are pushed below poverty line due to out of pocket expenditure on health. It is, therefore, very important that prices of drugs are streamlined and made affordable. Unlike consumer products, where the buyer has a choice and can decide on what to buy, medicine is something over which the patient has no choice and is dependent on medical advice. The disease is not by choice. Therefore, it is all the more essential that the cost of drugs is within the reach of every citizen. The government owes a responsibility to bring down the cost of medicines.

The Cabinet approved the FRDI Bill (Financial Resolution & Deposit Insurance Bill) and thereafter the Bill was introduced in the Parliament on the last day of the last Session and now the Bill has been referred to the Joint Parliamentary Committee.

The CBI special court verdict exonerating all the accused in the 2G spectrum scam exposes the moral decline in the Indian polity during the last five years. The credibility of Indian politicians has always been suspect, but the manner in which it was shredded by the very votaries of the morality, public accountability, transparency and ethics has lowered India’s image in the international fraternity.

Country wide security situation is by and large under control, says the official sources in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). However, growing insecurity and fear among minorities and dalits following spate of targeted violence against them, their covert discriminatory treatment and deprivation under the veneer of ‘inclusive’ governance and development and consequential heightened social tension endangering the core values of India’s time tested civilisational strength of diversity, tolerance and co-existence are worrisome. If the current trends of divisive politics, hatred and splintering of people along communal and religious lines are not stemmed, increasing social tension has the potential to impact adversely internal security of the nation.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kannur-based Halal Faidah Cooperative Society’s (HFCS) plan to start a cooperative society based on Islamic principles of banking has fructified. But the euphoria over its inauguration has been tempered by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who sounded a note of abundant caution.

Avanti and Chetna Jadhav had no choice but to go to Pakistan. Their emotions were tied and nailed to the man in Pakistan. And the control was in the enemy’s hands. The last time the two saw and spoke to Kulbhushan Jadhav was 22 months ago. One was the mother and the other the wife of the man on death row in Pakistan. It was now or never.

In the post-2008 global financial meltdown, the twin Bretton Woods institutions, represented by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), had lost their luster or bluster in taming members who are reluctant to toe their lines. Still, the sting in their truncated tails do rub members the wrong way, especially when such members govern the polity on democratic lines, where it would be intractable to keep the free flow of information across the universe filtered or shut or pay the political price for administering the unpleasant economic nostrums!

The choice of the people of Tamil Nadu of their favourite politician has not always been easy to fathom, especially by the rest of the country. After MG Ramachandran’s death, for instance, the mantle fell on the Tamil icon’s mistress, Jayalalithaa, with popular approval after a brief period when his wife, Janaki, was his inheritor.

Like any other developing country, market forces played the decisive role in the election of Cyril Ramaphosa as the president of the African National Congress (ANC). By virtue of being the party president, he would eventually become South Africa’s next president. What has been significant is while the voters did not whole heartedly support Cyril, his victory was, nevertheless, hailed as a “humbling rebuke” of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma and a stark rejection of his policies.

KOLKATA: It is not often that a particular election result pleases both winners and losers ---although broadly, that was the gist of the recently concluded Gujarat Assembly polls. The BJP was happy to win (however narrowly) for a record sixth time bucking anti-incumbency issues, while the Congress put up its best showing in years.