RIS Blog

  Krishna Ravi Srinivas, PhD, Consultant & Senior Fellow , RIS   On the Occasion of International Day of Women and Girls in Science (11 th February) ,   UNESCO released a chapter from the forthcoming World Science Report (WSR) , titled as ‘ To be smart, the digital revolution will need to be inclusive’ [1] focussing on the gender dimension and the case for inclusion in, inter alia, digital technologies, innovation, and science. Given the emphasis on smart in the title of WSR, the title of the chapter is not surprising. The chapter highlights various issues in gender inclusion in Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) , AI, STEM, diversity in technology sectors, patents and intellectual property rights and the need to measure gender inclusion. In the 4IR, skills shortage that is expected can be addressed by educating and training women. “ For women to seize upon the opportunities offered by the 4IR, there will need to be a level playing field in terms of access to enablers such

  By Apurva Bhatnagar, Research Assistant, RIS The Hon. Finance Minister on 1 st February, 2021 announced a 137 per cent increase in the budgeted expenditure on healthcare in India. The budget healthcare expenditure has increased to 2.33 lakh crore for FY 2021-22 from 94.45 thousand crore in FY 2020-21. With the National Health Policy, 2017 (NHP) envisaging annual expenditure on health and wellbeing at around 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2025, this is surely a welcome step towards that direction. It should be noted that healthcare is currently in the state list, although there has been growing pressure from public healthcare experts in India that the subject should be moved to concurrent list. Expenditure of all state governments on Health and Family welfare has increased modestly from 0.6 per cent of GDP to 1 per cent of GDP during 2010-11 to 2020-21. [1] As noted by various public health experts/organizations, including RIS, this figure is still low, particularly when compared with int