Expenditures on health in many developing countries are being disproportionately spent on health services that have a low overall health impact, and that disproportionately benefit the rich. Without explicit consideration of priority setting, this situation is likely to remain unchanged: resource allocation is too often dictated by historical patterns, and maintains vested interests. This paper explores how prioritization between different health interventions can be rationalised by the use of clearly defined criteria. A number of key efficiency and equity criteria are (...) examined, in particular analysing how potential tradeoffs could be incorporated into the decision making process. (shrink)

Among the billions of persons journeying towards self-discovery, one is living in Mumbai, India. A woman, revelling in the roles of daughter and sister, wife and mother, teacher and writer. The three decades of her lifetime have seen lessons on faith and patience served to her in various interesting forms. And she has, almost magically, found guidance through friends and strangers alike at the 'right' times. She makes plenty of mistakes. Yet she sticks with childlike tenacity to her belief that (...) the path ofgenuineness brings life to a splendid culmination. January 2001 saw the opening of a new window in her heart-space—the introduction of the quality mind process, which she and others participated in during the week-long workshop on values and ethics at IIM Calcutta, India. She is yet to completely appreciate the magnificence of this new channel. Yet the shifis in feeling, thinking, speaking and behaving that she found happening due to the QMP have made her forever grateful. This is the essay she wrote, with descriptions of happenings woven with reflections from her journal, to narrate as best as she could the journey of the year with QMP. (shrink)

Bangladesh experienced a massive surge in humanitarian crises after the 1971 Liberation War due to the systematic use of violence at both public and private spheres. Fictional accounts of the post-conflict period depict women as subjected to institutionalised sexism and aggravated physical and mental violence. Critical studies on such narratives often reiterate a stereotypical and essentialising discourse surrounding women’s identity, characterising them as helpless and passive victims of discrimination and exploitation. Drawing upon Judith Butler’s notions of precarity and agency, we (...) argue that the Bangladeshi-born British writer Tahmima Anam’s The Good Muslim transcends victimhood narratives by creating a more nuanced image of woman as vulnerable victims and resisting subjects at the same time. The novel is preoccupied with notions of vulnerability, violence, religious zealotry, and family estrangement. The findings reveal that the precariousness of women in the post-war period is caused and aggravated by violence and oppression perpetrated at political, social, and religious spheres. Female characters like Maya and Piya are presented as empowered agents of transformation when it comes to vulnerable situations that render them as insignificant and precarious. The study concludes that the novel contests and alters the stereotypical representations of women embedded in normalising and hegemonic discourses. (shrink)