-The Hindu Ignoring hunger and malnutrition will have significant costs to any country's development. Nutrition improvement has both intrinsic and instrumental value One of the disappointments in the post-reform period in India has been the slow progress in the reduction of malnutrition, especially with reference to the underweight among children. In fact, the rate of change in the percentage of underweight children has been negligible in the period 1998-99 to 2005-06; the...

-The Guardian Narendra Modi may be feeling flush enough to spend millions on putting a loo in every home, but people also need to understand why they should use them From being the humble recipient of human waste, the toilet has reached the exalted status of being the subject of speeches by India's Narendra Modi. The prime minister promised to put a toilet in every home by 2019 in his independence...

-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...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Rural Development The Union Minister of Rural Development and Drinking Water and Sanitation Shri Nitin Gadkari said that Swachh Bharat Mission will be converted into a mass movement to make India an open defecation free country in Five Years. Addressing a Joint Press conference with the Urban Development Minister Shri M. Venkaiah Naidu here this afternoon, Shri Gadkari said, one lakh thirty four thousand crore rupees...

-The Hindu In addition to adequate provision of funds for cleaning, sanitation training and maintenance of toilets in schools, the issue of fixing accountability must also be addressed The revival of the issue of toilets in schools has brought to the fore a discussion that has for long existed among educationists, with varying positions occupying centre stage at different times. A couple of decades ago, when the deplorable state of education began...