ISSN (Print) - 0012-9976 | ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846

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Papering over the Cracks

The multidimensional poverty index conceals more than it reveals.

Critiquing ‘Component C’

The comprehensive environmental pollution index has been applied to identify and monitor industrially polluted clusters in India. In the calculation of the CEPI, there is a health parameter (Component C), which uses local health-related data. The article draws attention to the gaps in the design and guidelines to calculate Component C.

Basic Amenities, Deficiency-induced Ailments, and Catastrophic Health Spending in the Slums of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh

The pattern of disease that comes about due to inadequate availability and poor quality of drinking water as well as substandard sanitation and micro-environmental (drainage, sewerage, and solid waste disposal) facilities in the slums of Lucknow are investigated in this paper. It estimates the relevant health costs and catastrophic health spending in these slum households. The results suggest that limitations in these public utilities cause numerous water-borne and faecal-transmitted infections as well as other infectious diseases. Consequently, the poorest sections of the urban population of Lucknow, who live in slums, spend almost a third of their consumption expenditure on out-of-pocket expenditure, and over half of these disease-affected households have encountered CHS. It suggests a comprehensive and integrated approach for reviving a large number of short- and long-term policies, which involve specifically developing a policy for providing free medical facilities to all acute and chronic cases in poor households, which would lead to a reduction of OOPE and CHS in slum areas.

A Case for Functional Social Protection Portability to Address Vulnerabilities of Migration-affected Children

Children from low-income migrant households are invisible in migration discourses. Despite existing provisions under various policies and schemes, access to social protection for migrant children has been fragile. Disruptions in education and inconsistent access to nutrition and primary healthcare sets them back further than non-migrant children from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds. COVID-19 has underscored that groups like migrants who face specific vulnerabilities are in acute need of tailored social protection programmes/measures. Functional portability measures that make opportune use of existing provisions in schemes are the first step towards this. Building on existing initiatives, policy frameworks must support adaptive social protection responses for this important segment of India’s population.

‘Health for All’ in Neo-liberal Times

Striving for Equity: Healthcare in Sri Lanka from Independence to the Millennium, 1948–2000 by Margaret Jones, Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 2020; pp xiii+ 259, `790.

Decoding the Three Pandemic Budgets

Despite substantial socio-economic disparities in health, education, and nutrition outcomes, the government is pitching human development expenditure against capital expenditure. In a welfare state, social sector should be the centre of policy prescriptions. Instead of an imperfect assumption of trickle-down, the the government needs to realise that growth and development must go hand in hand.

Mandatory Rice Fortification with Iron

The lack of evidence and misplaced policy design underlie the government’s push for fortifying staples with iron.

 

Drivers of Child Nutritional Change in India

A trend analysis is undertaken to account for the child nutritional change in India by covering 25 years of the National Family Health Surveys from 1992–93 to 2015–16. The 34% overtime decline in child undernutrition has been possible mainly because of the improvement in parental education, household economic status, coverage in immunisation, and reproductive healthcare. However, the onus has shifted towards education and economic status. The combined share of contribution to the nutritional change has increased from 48.4% to 71% between 1992–93 to 2005–06 and 2005–06 to 2015–16. While there has been a saturation of persistent government interventions for immunisation, antenatal care, and institutional delivery, education and economic status have become stronger predictors. They ensure better childcare practices, sanitation, proper diet, and access to healthcare. Therefore, the future of child nutrition lies largely in the improvement of quality education and inclusive economic development. 

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