There is some positive news about national progress in sanitation and drinking water. A newly released report from UNICEF and WHO informs us that the country has witnessed 31 percent reduction in open defecation since 1990. This means 394 million Indians no more defecate in the open. The bad news, however, is that the progress in ‘population not practising open defecation’ among the poorest has been slower during the last 20...
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For a rational education debate -Rohit Dhankar
-The Hindu If Maharashtra is trying to identify children who are not getting educated, as per RTE, it has to include those children who are not studying the core subjects, be they in a madrasa, Vedic pathshala or any other religious or community school Maharashtra’s recent decision to conduct a survey of what it calls “non-school going children” seems to have created a storm. Political parties are now up in arms calling...
More »Here's why India may be on the brink of an unprecedented full-blown water crisis -Rahul Sachitanand & Sandhya Ravishankar
-The Economic Times A steel wheelchair occupies pride of place in the home of A Swami, a resident of Kottala village in Nalgonda district of Telangana. When you walk into the small two-room dwelling, you immediately see why. Swami is barely a couple of feet tall, with an outsize head and a shrunken body. He contracted fluorosis as a baby and that stunted both his mental and physical progress. The government's balm...
More »Lo and behold! Maharashtra's Rs 4,845 crore irrigation project without water -Yogesh Pawar
-DNA Mumbai: What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of an irrigation project? Water? Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case with the Union Union Ministry for Forests, Environment & Climate Change (MoEF). How else would it have cleared the the Rs 4,845 crore, 23.66 TMC (thousand million cubic feet) Krishna Marathwada Lift Irrigation Scheme (KMLIS) without water availability? The environmental clearance given on 24th June...
More »Nudge to tweak TB treatment rules -GS Mudur
-The Telegraph New Delhi: India could prevent on average 18,000 people from developing multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis every year over the next decade if the health ministry accelerates proposed changes in TB diagnosis and treatment policies, public health experts have said. A study by the health ministry's TB division has estimated that India could avert 180,000 cases of MDR-TB between 2015 and 2025 if most patients who seek government treatment are tested for MDR-TB...
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