-Economic and Political Weekly Despite the efforts of successive governments, sanitation coverage remains low in India. While several studies have explored the impact of user financing on the improvement of sanitation facilities, this article looks at the conditions of housing, infrastructure and the surroundings of slums, under which different sanitation arrangements are made. The sanitation arrangements considered are of various types of ownership and cost-sharing arrangements. The findings provide useful insights...

-Decoding the Priorities: An Analysis of Union Budget 2020-21, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), February 2020 The publication presents an analysis of the priorities in Union Budget 2020-21, both on public expenditure and resource mobilisation front. It has been divided broadly into five chapters. The first chapter focuses on a host of important aspects under Resource Mobilisation, like domestic tax policy, international taxation policy, financial transparency, and Centre-State...

-The Hindu NITI Aayog will develop draft policy, which will be circulated to the Ministries for consultations Urban areas are likely to receive a renewed focus under the government’s ICDS programme, which provides for anganwadis or day-care centres across the country for delivery of nutrition and pre-school education. The government’s think tank, the NITI Aayog, has prepared a draft working paper, which once approved would be circulated to different ministries for consultations. These...

-Down to Earth Govt policy think tank asks chief secretaries to extract nutrients from human excreta and use them in place of fertilsers Explore the possibility of extracting essential nutrients like phosphorus, nitrogen, potassium and carbon from human excreta and replace fertilisers used in agriculture with them, the Niti Ayog has advised all states. Faecal sludge is a rich source of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K), the three essential nutrients used...

-The Hindu The AAP will hope that the Assembly polls are a referendum on its government’s work Delhi, the Union Territory (UT) that hosts India’s capital city, might lag behind several States in total population and in area, but it enjoys outsize significance in terms of media and political attention. With 1.47 crore electors spread across the largely metropolitan national capital region and its pockets of rural voters in some suburbs, Delhi...