Positive Externalities: Lessons from a Participatory Workshop on Heat and Mental Health
Anecdotes can spark new research Our interest in heat and its impact on mental health has been shaped by our belief in the power of storytelling and collaborative inquiry as part of evidence-building. This interest partly emerged from our previous project that focused on the lives of women who work in public spaces. During the […]
Levitt Model for Covid-19: No room for complacency
A disease prediction model proposed by 2013 Nobel laureate Michael Levitt that relies on a simple mathematical formula was recently applied to India and various states by Prof. Bhaskaran Raman, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay. Several researchers have already highlighted the limitations of this model, such as assuming a linear extrapolation of the growth […]
The Incentive Mechanisms of the Rashtriya Swastha Bima Yojana (RSBY) – Are They Geared for Service Delivery? The Case of Karnataka
This article was written after the Centre for Budget and Policy Studies completed a household survey in the district of Shimoga in Karnataka in November 2010. The team had been interacting with various stakeholders – the department of labour, the insurance company, the district officers, hospital administrators and the beneficiaries of the scheme over the […]
The Elephant in the Insurance Controversy Room
I have been witness to many instances where hospitals overcharge as soon as they know you hold an insurance policy. A friend of mine was charged around Rs 250/- for a simple Out Patient Discharge because she happened to mention she had insurance. If she hadn’t, it could not have cost more than Rs 100/- […]
Mothers Day, a Reflection
May 9th was celebrated around the world as Mothers Day. A day where the urban population in India took some time to celebrate their mothers and her influence in their lives. However, in India, Mothers Day has very little meaning to the 254 mothers out of 100,000 who die every year during or after child […]