-HuffingtonPost.in In the foothills of the Himalayas, on the outskirts of Dehradun in a town called Rajpur, sits a bustling network of co-operatives strung together by a family of American social entrepreneurs. If one is fortunate enough to venture to this specific community in India, one would never guess that hundreds of jobs are being supported in different pockets by the Murray's desire to create opportunity for artisans with challenging lives....

-Business Standard Indian farming is labour intensive as mechanization is expensive. This model might change it while keeping the cost very low. The single biggest challenge in farming is debt. A large share of farmers’ insurmountable debt burden comes from purchase of farm equipment. Mechanized farming results in higher productivity but is notoriously capital intensive. A 40 HP tractor with 2 basic implements (a rotavator and a cultivator) and a trolley costs...

-IPS News GUNTUR, India: Thirty-seven-year-old Kode Sujatha stands in front of a hut with a palm-thatched roof, surrounded by a group of men shouting angrily and jostling one another for a spot at the front of the crowd. Each of the boatmen, who carry sand mined from a nearby river to the shore every day, wants to be paid before the others.   Sujatha stares hard at them, holds up a piece of paper...

-Economic and Political Weekly While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives...

-Outlook Even the worst-governed states can improve their PDS and ensure grain for the poorest. Look at Madhya Pradesh. THE National Food Security Act (NFSA),  2013, is not in very good health. Two years after it came into force, just a few states are implementing it. Others are still struggling with the identification of eligible households, public distribution system (PDS) reforms and other preparations. Yet, recent evidence suggests that some states...