-India Today At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is spearheading a drive to build separate toilets for boys and girls in schools across the country within a year, the issue has been hit by a tussle between the Drinking Water and sanitation Ministry and the Human Resource Development Ministry over who will fund the construction in state-run schools. Modi's dream project "Swachh Bharat", which aims to make India free of...

-The Hindu Business Line Battling childhood diarrhoea with an Indian vaccine is good strategy Almost half of India's 1,76,000 diarrhoeal deaths in children below five are caused by rotavirus, the pathogen responsible for severe childhood diarrhoea. In addition, 8 lakh hospitalisations and over 30 lakh outpatient visits each year among children below 5 are triggered by diarrhoea of rotavirus origin. WHO recommends the rotavirus vaccine for infants in all national immunisation programmes. Globally,...

-The Telegraph In her recent book, Green Wars, the environmental journalist Bahar Dutt, writes: "The editor of a leading media house, everytime I pitched a green story, would invariably complain: ‘Environmentalism is stalling growth; all I am interested in is double-digit growth for this country.'" The idea that environmental protection and economic progress are at odds is widely held among India's elite. It is shared by newspaper editors, economists, businessmen, and, not...

-The Hindu Policymakers must continue to follow the twofold strategy of letting the economy grow fast and attacking poverty directly through poverty alleviation programmes In June 2012, the government of India appointed a committee to take a new look at the methodology for measuring poverty. The committee submitted its report towards the end of June 2014. The purpose of this article is to briefly explain the approach taken by this committee. Growth is...

-The Guardian A UN working group has devised a final draft of targets to succeed the millennium development goals. What do you think of the 17 proposals? The UN working group responsible for crafting the sustainable development goals (SDGs) has handed down its final proposal, adding a goal to address domestic and global inequality. The recommendations include 17 goals and 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. The list includes a reworking of...