Articles by Soumitra Ghosh

State-funded health insurance schemes do not target the truly needy or completely miss them, while the government is unable to regulate the private sector. These aspects were not taken into account when the government announced the National Health Protection Scheme. The scheme will turn out to be just another means for the growth of the private sector in the secondary and tertiary care segments.

Compensatory afforestation is a dubious and controversial environmental “offset” that is adding to environmental damage instead of mitigating or compensating it. Compensatory afforestation may actually be accelerating the invasion of India’s forests by big corporations, in collusion with a permissive state, by legitimising the destruction of forests, greenwashing the land grabs, and encroaching on common property resources and community-held lands. This article is based on a study of the Polavaram multipurpose project in Andhra Pradesh, the Durgapur mines in Maharashtra, the Teesta hydroelectric project in Sikkim and the Lower Subansiri hydroelectric project in Arunachal Pradesh.

Trading in environmental commodities like various forms of "offsets" has started with its questionable premise that any loss or damage to environment at a particular space-time can be offset by a supposedly pro-environmental action in another space-time through the mediation of capital and market. In India, a rather disguised offset process known as compensatory afforestation has taken off under state and judicial patronage quite some time ago. Besides, India also has the strong credential of having hosted a more common form of offset trading in the Clean Development Mechanism. Referring briefly to both but discussing mainly the philosophy and practices of various forms of offset markets in vogue, this article tries to show that this concept is in sync with the evolution of capital and capitalism in history.

Out-of-pocket payments are the principal source of healthcare finance in most Asian countries, and India is no exception. This fact has important consequences for household living standards. In this paper the author explores significant changes in the 1990s and early 2000s that appear to have occurred as a result of out-of-pocket spending on healthcare in 16 Indian states. Using data from the National Sample Survey on consumption expenditure undertaken in 1993-94 and 2004-05, the author measures catastrophic payments and impoverishment due to out-of-pocket payments for healthcare. Considerable data on the magnitude, distribution and economic consequences of out-of-pocket payments in India are provided; when compared over the study period, these indicate that new policies have significantly increased both catastrophic expenditure and impoverishment.