India's health failures remain visible and pronounced despite high rates of economic growth since the 1980s and more than six decades of democratic rule. The authors address the key issues that emerge from the country's health situation, speculating on what it will take for low-income groups to begin claiming for better social services

India's health failures remain visible and pronounced despite high rates of economic growth since the 1980s and more than six decades of democratic rule. The authors address the key issues that emerge from the country's health situation, speculating on what it will take for low-income groups to begin claiming for better social services

Since independence in 1947 India has remained a stable and functioning democracy in the face of enormous challenges. Amid a variety of interlinking contraries and a burgeoning media – one of the largest in the world – there has been a serious dearth of scholarship on the role of journalists and dramatically changing journalism practices. This book brings together some of the best known scholars on Indian journalism to ask questions such as: Can the plethora of privately run cable news channels provide the discursive space needed to strengthen the practices of democracy, not just inform results from the ballot boxes? Can neoliberal media ownership patterns provide space for a critical and free journalistic culture to evolve? What are the ethical challenges editors and journalists face on a day-to-day basis in a media industry which has exploded? In answering some of these questions, the contributors to this volume are equally sensitive to the historical, social, and cultural context in which Indian journalism evolved, but they do not all reach the same conclusion about the role of journalism in Indian civil society and democracy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Studies.

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the discourse on health in India, examining governance, policies, programmes, and the involvement of the state and civil society in ensuring health for all and especially for people living with HIV/AIDS. The book critically examines government measures to improve healthcare services in India, specifically for disadvantaged groups like the poor and women who face several obstacles in accessing healthcare. It explores various aspects of healthcare accessibility, gender equity measures and strategies implemented by the state and highlights the significant contributions of civil society organizations and activists in shaping healthcare provisions, as well as their influence on the discourse surrounding health and HIV/AIDS. With a special study based on the author’s research on HIV-positive women in Karnataka (a high-prevalence state) and West Bengal (a low-prevalence state), and an examination of government policies, financial allocations, and relevant reports, this book fills a crucial gap in academic literature by offering a comprehensive analysis of health and governance in relation to HIV-positive women, in India. The book will be a valuable resource for students and researchers in public health, policy studies, community health, gender studies, sociology of health and illness, and Indian government and politics. It will also be useful for policymakers in the development of more effective and inclusive healthcare policies.

India's health failures remain visible and pronounced despite high rates of economic growth since the 1980s and more than six decades of democratic rule. The authors address the key issues that emerge from the country's health situation, speculating on what it will take for low-income groups to begin claiming for better social services

The Global Civil Society Yearbook is the standard work on all aspects of contemporary global civil society for activists, practitioners, students and academics alike.

‘ICTs and Development in India’ is a unique attempt to study the nature and consequences of the growing presence of Information Technology in development projects in India, focusing particularly on E-governance and Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) development programs initiated by Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). Sreekumar persuasively argues that there is in fact a wide chasm between the expectations and the actual benefits of CSO initiatives in rural India, and that recognising this crucial fact yields important lessons in conceptualizing development and social action in rural areas.

This book presents important fields of research in public healthcare in India from an interdisciplinary and health systems perspectives. Discussing how the exchange of power between the health justice triad, viz., the State (judiciary as the arm of the State), legal and medical professions, and civil society, cumulatively shapes the outcomes of health justice for citizens, it provides insights into India’s juridico-legal processes and of seeking justice in healthcare. It critically assesses civil society’s counter-hegemonic role in bolstering justice in health care and examines the potential of transforming health care jurisprudence into health justice. Repositioning the social right to healthcare as integral to social citizenship and social justice, and opening avenues for inter-professional and interdisciplinary power discourse in public health policy research, the book is of interest to academics, practitioners, students, researchers, and the wide academic community working in public health care issues broadly.

Global health governance has been the subject of wide scholarship, more recently brought to the fore by priorities for global health defined by the Sustainable Development Agenda. The health landscape itself has changed dramatically in the last two decades, shaped by cross-border flows of capital, ideas, technology intermediated through the complex interaction between global, national and local actors and institutions. This book analyses the complex terrain of global health governance and local responses to new global forms of integration and fragmentation in India. It unpacks, both conceptually and empirically, local manifestation and translation of global health architecture and regimes and how these processes influence public health policy and practice; as well as to what extent rules and flows are complied with, resisted and transformed at national and sub-national levels. Drawing together critical scholarship on interactions between global and local actors, focusing on processes, dilemmas, conflicts and trade-offs that such engagement presents for national health policies and health systems, it speaks to this interface between the global, national and local. Filling an important gap in global health governance scholarship in India, the book is a useful contribution to the fields of global health policy, international health and development, health systems, health inequalities, public health, public administration, development studies, social work, nursing, management studies and mainstream social science disciplines that engage with globalisation and health.

Human Rights and the Third World: Issues and Discourses deals with the controversial questions on the universalistic notions of human rights. It finds Third World perspectives on human rights and seeks to open up a discursive space in the human rights discourse to address unresolved questions, citing issues and problems from different countries in the Third World: Whether alternative perspectives should be taken as the standard for human rights in the Third World countries? Should there be a universalistic notion of rights for Homo sapiens or are we talking about two diametrically opposite trends and standards of human rights for the same species? How far these Third World perspectives of human rights can ensure the protection of the minorities and the vulnerable sections of population, particularly the women and children within the Third World? Can these alternative perspectives help in fighting the Third World problems like poverty, hunger, corruption, despotism, social exclusion like the caste system in India, communalism, and the like? Can there be reconciliation between the Third World perspectives and the Western perspective of human rights?