Articles by Debabar Banerji

There is documentary evidence of the degeneration of the scientific basis of dealing with tubercul0sis as a public health problem in India. The outstanding research on TB in the past must not be forgotten by the authors of "Resource Optimisation for Tuberculosis Elimination in India" (EPW, 7 May 2016).

It is good that you have drawn attention (“Evaluation of the Health Mission”, 23 January 2010) to an account of the early operation (May 2005-December 2008) of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in the performance audit conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.

The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) is based on questionable premises. The union ministry of health and family welfare and its advisors doggedly seem to refuse to learn from the many experiences of the past, both from sincere efforts to develop endogenous mechanisms and from the imposition of ill-conceived, badly formulated, techno-centric vertical programmes.

Simplistic Approach to Health Policy Analysis World Bank Team on Indian Health Sector Debabar Banerji A World Bank report on the health sector has set out to offer an alternative policy framework to cushion the impact of structural adjustment programmes on health services. But by choosing health financing as a tool for policy analysis it has arrived at highly questionable conclusions.

Family Planning in the Nineties More of the Same?
THE 1991 Census [GOI 1991] once again revealed an explosive population growth during the decade The population had increased by yet another 160 million; the increase was 137million during 1971-81 and 109 million during 1961-71 [GOI 1989:7]. By all accounts it is an unmitigated disaster for the country. It is a devastating indictment of the family planning programme. The allocation for family planning programme jumped from Rs 6.5 million and Rs 15,0 million during the First (1951-56) and Second (1956-61) Plans to Rs 270 million and Rs 2,858 million during the Third (1961-66) and the Fourth (1969-74) Plans. It was a massive Rs 10,100 million in the Sixth Plan (1980 85) and Rs 32,560 million in the Seventh Plan (1985-90) [GOI 1989b:4). Against these facts the claims of the authorities about the per cent of couples protected and the number of births averted are totally irrelevant, if not plainly mythical.