-Accountability Initiative/ RaghuBytes Unless you have a blocked nose, I strongly suggest that you do not drive from Bhubaneshwar the capital of Orissa, to Kandamahal, a remote tribal district, particularly in the evenings. At twilight, when you begin to wind into the interior, you are greeted with the sight of the behinds of the entire population squatting on the roadside, faces turned away and shitting. We quickly wound up the windows...

-The Indian Express   Mewat (Haryana): Mewat district Villages: 443 Population: 10.9 lakh Literacy: 56.1% (women 37.6%) Sanitation status: Lack of toilets in schools identified as main reason for high dropout among girls, over a thousand toilets built in 2008-12. Rajakiya Kanya Madhyamik Pathshala in Mewat district's Shah Chaukha village has 786 girls on the rolls between nursery and Class VIII. In 2008, a toilet was constructed, but within months, it shut down for lack of...

-CNN-IBN New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the central government on a petition seeking direction to take steps to prevent the increasing number of suicides by the farmer in different parts of the country on account of their difficult financial conditions. There is a suicide by a farmer in distress every 32 minute, the plea said. Seeking the government's response over growing incidence of suicides by farmers, the bench...

-The Financial Express A mechanism is needed to compensate farmers for not exercising their right to sell productive land but continue to grow foodgrains. India finds itself in a piquant situation. While its population, and with it the number of poor, is growing, its cultivable land is not only shrinking, more worryingly, the economic returns of the agricultural use are diminishing vis-a-vis non-agricultural use. The situation may not be alarming right now,...

-Economic and Political Weekly Despite economic growth, government latrine construction, and increasing recognition among policymakers that open defecation constitutes a health and human capital crisis, it remains stubbornly widespread in rural India. We present evidence from new survey data collected in Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Many survey respondents' behaviour reveals a preference for open defecation: over 40% of households with a working latrine have at least one...