Daily Hindu Editorials

The NITI Aayog Health Index should trigger a wider public debate Unsurprisingly, States with a record of investment in literacy, nutrition and primary health care have achieved high scores in NITI Aayog’s first Health Index. Kerala, Punjab, and Tamil Nadu are the best-performing large States, while Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh bring up the rear. Health-care delivery is the responsibility of States; the Centre provides financial and policy support. Being able to meet the Sustainable Development Goals over the coming decade depends crucially on the States’ performance. Yet, health care is not a mainstream political issue in India, and hardly influences electoral results. The Index, with all its limitations given uneven data availability, hopes to make a difference here by encouraging a competitive approach for potentially better outcomes. For instance, with political will, it should be possible for Odisha to bring down its neonatal mortality rate...

Address structural problems that have caused trading in Indian derivatives to move offshore India’s stock exchanges are not too keen on the idea of competing with their global peers. Instead, they are happy to guard the home turf against foreign exchanges that do a better job of finding new clients. On Friday, the National Stock Exchange, the Bombay Stock Exchange and the Metropolitan Stock Exchange of India announced their decision to stop providing data feed and other support to overseas exchanges that list derivatives linked to Indian stocks and indices. Any existing agreement allowing data-sharing with foreign bourses, except that which is related to exchange-traded funds, will expire in six months. Explaining the reason, the statement said offshore derivatives could be causing “migration of liquidity from India, which is not in the best interest of Indian markets”. Given that the volume of derivatives linked to Indian stocks trading in the offshore market is high...

Dealing with the unfolding political drama in the Maldives, which has undeniable geopolitical implications for New Delhi, requires a great deal of craft, patience and diplomacy. Not force. More importantly, restoring democracy and civil liberties in Male, or anywhere else in the region, should not be our business. It’s for the islanders there to do that as they deem fit. And yet, New Delhi must look after its strategic interests in the increasingly chaotic Indian Ocean Region. The success of Indian diplomacy would lie in striking the ‘Goldilocks’ balance in dealing with Male; neither too hot nor too cold. 🔹India’s Male dilemma Ever since Abdulla Yameen Abdul Gayoom became the President of the island nation in 2013, the country has grown closer to China, and has consistently used the oldest trick in the playbook of small states: playing big neighbours against each other, to get what it wants. In 2012, for instance, it cancelled an Indian firm’s con...

Neither the Budget nor the National Health Policy 2017 shows a clear health sector road map The National Health Protection Scheme announced in this year’s Budget has generated a lot of debate. The government has committed itself to “providing coverage up to ₹5 lakh per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalisation” for 10 crore poor families, with approximately 50 crore people as beneficiaries. As only ₹2,000 crore in 2018-19 has been allotted to finance this scheme, various government functionaries have come up with estimates between ₹10,000 to ₹12,000 crore as its actual cost. We wish to take the debate beyond the money required and look at other crucial issues. 🔹The target group First, the government’s target group seems to be the bottom 40% (50 crore) of the population. A good starting point would be to look at the insurance coverage that this section already has. An analysis of the National Sample Survey ...

With the sentencing of former Bangladesh Prime Minister and chairperson of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Begum Khaleda Zia to five years rigorous imprisonment in a corruption case, the country enters into uncharted waters. For as long as most Bangladeshis have been alive, political power in the country has been more or less evenly divided between the Awami League (AL) and the BNP. But now, for the first time, it looks as though one of the parties is within striking distance of a blow that will take the other party out of contention permanently, thereby ushering in a new era in domestic politics. 🔹A brief political history BNP and AL traded terms in office from 1991, when the BNP came to power following the first elections after nearly a decade of military rule, with the AL coming to power in 1996 and the BNP returning in 2001. But one could argue that the BNP sowed the seeds of its current political disenfranchisement with its misbegotten rule from 2...