The report of the parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs calling for a comprehensive Public Health Act, as a response to the extreme stresses caused by COVID-19, is a welcome call to reform a fragmented health system. When the pandemic arrived, National Health Profile 2019 data showed that there were an estimated 0.55 government hospital beds for 1,000 people. Prolonged underinvestment in public health infrastructure thus left millions seeking help from a highly commercialised private sector with little regulatory oversight; the situation was even worse in rural areas, where care facilities are weaker, and urban workers fled to their villages, afraid of the cost of falling sick in cities. Acknowledging these distortions, and the inadequacy of existing legal frameworks, the panel has called for an omnibus law that will curb profiteering during such crises and provide robust cashless health insurance. Its indictment of the feverish commerce surrounding health-care provision,
The government has kicked the can down the road by deciding to keep in abeyance critical provisions of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) of 2016 till March 31, 2021. To recap, because of the large-scale economic hara-kiri triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown, the government had raised the threshold of loan defaults that would spark off insolvency proceedings from ₹1 lakh to ₹1 crore on the day of the lockdown’s announcement — March 24. It had indicated that if things did not improve by April-end, the suspensions of certain sections of the IBC for six months could be considered to prevent companies at large from being forced into the insolvency process for a ‘force majeure’ default. An ordinance, in June, indefinitely barred the initiation of insolvency proceedings both, voluntarily or by creditors, for defaults arising on or after March 25, 2020, for a period of six months that could be stretched to a year. When the initial six months of forbearance under the IBC
Mini Krishnan
Why do some memories from half-a-century ago seem brighter and clearer than what happened last year? From apparently nowhere pops up the name of a person long forgotten or the colour of the binding of an old book. Patterns of memory seem to have no logic at all.When we were eight or nine, my twin, Ravi, and I, fired by stories about the Lone Ranger, Tarzan, Ramses II in the Ten Commandments, incidents from the Mahabharata and tips from watching school theatre, began to stage home plays. I don’t
