-Financial Express If ever there was a beautiful word in Indian polity, it shall be none other than ‘poverty’. Existence of poverty, the necessary evil, ensured the Congress and various regional parties win elections after elections through rhetoric, albeit repeatedly but in different forms, and finding a page on their election manifestos. Did any of the ideologically opposite previous dispensations ever knocked the door of the poor man for eliminating the...

-Livemint.com Since 2014, the NDA has cut funding for rural drinking water and focused more on sanitation, leaving millions without access to safe and assured water Water is central to human sustenance but millions of Indians do not get enough of it. In 2015, 163 million Indians lacked access to clean water near their homes, the highest figure in the world according to WaterAid, a non-governmental organization focusing on global water issues....

-The Hindu Waste disposal from other toilets could turn into health and environmental nightmare New Delhi: Over the last year, a government advertisement featuring film actors Akshay Kumar and Bhumi Pednekar has been preaching the benefits of the “do gadde” or twin-pit latrines, which would create valuable farm manure from human excreta. “Shauchalaya ka ashirvad,” proclaims Mr. Kumar in the advertisement produced by the Centre’s flagship sanitation scheme Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. This month,...

-TheWire.in Declining budget allocation and actual expenditure on schemes geared towards agriculture, sanitation and housing have brought the government's seriousness to the cause of rural welfare under suspicion. Direct benefit transfer has dominated the majority of the discussion on the Interim Budget in the context of agriculture. However, in order to properly understand the seriousness of the government to the cause of farmers and related issues of rural development, we should also...

-Mongabay.com * Contamination of groundwater with chemicals like arsenic and fluoride is an important issue in several states of India. Even though government has schemes to address the problem not much has been achieved. * Authorities have been repeatedly told that efforts on war-footing are needed to protect millions of Indians from the contaminated groundwater but the work is yet to acquire the pace needed. * The parliamentary standing committee on rural development...