-The Hindu Studies on the Swachh Bharat Mission don’t confirm the government’s claims On October 2, 2017, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) completed its third year. Over Rs. 60,000 crore has been spent on the programme, but despite its scope and importance, there is very little objective evidence about its performance So far the numbers that have been widely cited by the government are from its own administrative data and the Swachh Survekshan...
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Improve nutritional content of school meals to tackle stunting - Soumya Swaminathan and SV Subramanian
-Hindustan Times As per the latest National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau, which has been collecting data on diet and nutritional status of rural, tribal and urban populations for almost four decades, the calorie intake of children (1-3 years) in rural areas was only about 70% of their requirement due to shortage. In India, more than 4.8 crore children suffer from stunting, which means they are below the normal height range for their...
More »Missing the point of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan
-Livemint.com The government should put greater emphasis on behaviour change than construction of toilets In 2014, more than half of India’s population still practised open defecation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi set his government the goal of making the country open defecation-free in five years, by the 150th anniversary of M.K. Gandhi’s birthday in 2019, by launching the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA). Three years later, we are more than halfway into that period,...
More »Bihar laggard in toilet mission
-The Telegraph New Delhi: Bihar is among the states with the poorest progress towards open-defecation-free (ODF) targets with some districts requiring 500 toilets every day to meet 2019 goals, according to a report from the non-government Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) released today. The report said Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand, accounting for 60 per cent of open defecation, would need to accelerate efforts for India to reach its ODF...
More »Privacy: Many-splendoured right which needs to be at forefront of civil liberties -Madhavi Goradia Divan
-Hindustan Times The judgment in Puttaswamy takes privacy far beyond the confines of Article 21 and weaves it into other fundamental rights such as the freedom of conscience, the freedom of assembly and the freedom of occupation. Fundamental rights were once described by the Supreme Court as “empty vessels into which each generation must pour its content in light of its experience” (PUCL v Union of India (2003) 4 SCC 399). Close to...
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