There’s a bogey of news to show the complementary association of Anna Hazare and Baba Ramdev on the issue of corruption and black money. It seems as if both of them are fighting the same battle against the Congress-led regime and supplementing each other in their respective struggles. Both of them have emerged as the most visible faces of the contemporary civil society, pressurising the government to take crucial steps...

The ends may justify the means, but let's be clear - in rural India, extremes of coercion are being used to encourage toilet use Robert Chambers recently wrote that community-led total sanitation is leading to a development revolution, especially in south Asia. I agree with his assessment of sanitation's importance. In practice, however, the success of community-led efforts often hinges on the use of outright coercion. In my experience, the measures...

Sonia Gandhi has told the Congress it is the party’s duty to ensure that all welfare schemes introduced by the government are “fully implemented” on the ground. In a letter published in the latest issue of party mouthpiece Congress Sandesh, Sonia wrote: “The UPA has worked hard to fulfil the strong mandate to govern it received from the people in 2009. Since then, the synergy between the government and the party...

The strict guidelines that every civil surgeon was supposed to follow to ensure zero diarrhoea deaths in the state issued on April 30 were ignored and a no-compliance report was sent to the state office of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM). The instruction list that ended with a pledge let us all take this resolution that there will be no diarrhoea deaths in our state in the days to...

-The Times of India   A day before UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi's visit to the tribal belt of the state, chief minister Ashok Gehlot and Union minister C P Joshi reviewed the preparations at Banswara and Dungarpur. Sonia would be on a day's visit to Banswara to launch the Centre's flagship rural self-employment programme and lay the foundation stone of the long-awaited ambitious Dungarpur-Banswara-Ratlam rail line project in Dungarpur district. UPA...