India's children continue to face a huge backlog of deprivations. For instance, India in 2005 reported an IMR of 58 deaths per 1000 live births. In contrast, China reported in 2005 an IMR of 23 and Bangladesh of 54. Neonatal deaths that account for 65% of infant mortality remain exceptionally high. In 2005-06, some 46% of children under three years were moderately or severely underweight

A significant and damaging event virtually passed unnoticed in the media

Water delivery is the responsibility of the government. Thirty years ago many parts of Delhi received drinking water much of the time. Today no area receives water round the clock and worse, the water delivered is contaminated. In common with cities in many developing countries, industrialisation, rapid urbanisation and growing population estimated to be around 16 million, caused in part by migration from rural areas, have put pressure on Delhi's water resources. An increased demand for water and falling ground-water levels have only intensified this pressure.

Goa is rapidly destroying its natural charms. The once lovely beaches are lovely no more, the banks of the great estuaries once clothed in unbroken forest are now defaced by a rash of ugly buildings and the government is even handing over tracts of forest and agricultural land to commerce and industry. Goa may continue to be a popular tourist resort but only in the hinterland will its beauty and charm survive.

Malnutrition is the underlying cause of half of under-five child deaths. So even though the proximate cause of children dying may be measles, diarrhoea, diphtheria, jaundice or malaria, the real reason is that they are so weakened by malnutrition that their small bodies are unable to withstand infection. Half of Uttar Pradesh's children (52%) were malnourished when the last National Family Health Survey (1998), the second, took place; half of them (47%) are still malnourished according to the latest NFHS (2005-6), the third.

By requiring the government to place more and more information in the public domain, the Right to Information Act, 2005 has raised the confidence of civil society organizations in India to enter into partnerships with government. This was evident e at Ananthapur, Andhra Pradesh, where a consortium of NGOs tied up in August 2006 with the state government to monitor the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme.

Public discourse on the Singur imbroglio by and large revolves around how many landholders have handed over, or not handed over, their land to the government for the proposed Tata motorcar factory. It is as if the number of landowners is the sole indicator of the extent of

Street vendors form a very important component of the urban informal sector in India. It is estimated that the total number of street vendors in the country is around 10 million.1 They comprise around 2% of the total population in the metropolitan cities. This paper broadly defines a street vendor as a person who offers goods for sale to the public at large without having a permanent built-up structure from which to sell.

This paper has threefold objectives: (a) to discuss the background and the need for a health insurance scheme; (b) to examine the different health insurance schemes including Community Based Universal Health Insurance Scheme (CBUHIS) and the most recent one proposed by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS); and (c) to summarize broad lessons from existing health insurance schemes to foreground the broad contours of the most desirable insurance scheme in the Indian context.

An acrimonious exchange of words over the Scheduled Tribes (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, has appeared in the national press during the past couple of months.