-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Drive to any Indian city. Chances are you will wade into chaotic traffic and roads full of potholes. You'll see choked drains, overflowing and smelly bins and streetlights that don't work. The reason for the mess isn't difficult to unravel. Most of our municipal bodies are cash strapped, unable to take care of the city's needs. The workforce is poor. Given the indifferent reputation of urban...

-PTI NEW DELHI: Poverty ratio in the country has declined to 21.9% in 2011-12 from 37.2% in 2004-05 on account of increase in per capita consumption, Planning Commission said. According to the commission, in 2011-12 for rural areas, the national poverty line by using the Tendulkar methodology is estimated at Rs 816 per capita per month in villages and Rs 1,000 per capita per month in cities. This would mean that the persons...

Adding to the debate over celebrity economists blaming India’s malnutrition and stunting vis-à-vis Sub Saharan Africa on genetic differences, Dean Spears, a public health expert and a visiting fellow at Delhi School of Economics, offers evidence connecting our poor sanitation and open defecation with high morbidity and malnutrition. (see both links below). In an evidence-based paper titled Policy Lessons from Implementing India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (2012), based on the review...

-The Hindu Building on the work by RTI activists, India needs to set up a mechanism that can make for accountability on the sources and utilisation of party funds Throughout the world, political parties collect funds to build and sustain the organisation, to train party cadres and fight elections. Recognising that they are the main link to the citizens (as voters) and, by implication, the mainstay of democracy, many countries, including India,...

-Outlook Malnutrition, especially among children and in tribal areas, is nobody's priority 40-45 per cent of women in Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh are malnourished; their babies will likely be born so. 40-45 per cent of women in Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh are malnourished; their babies will likely be born so. *** What is it about the government that the starvation deaths of children don't jolt it out of its stupor?...