Safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights, the General Assembly declared today, voicing deep concern that almost 900 million people worldwide do not have access to clean water. The 192-member Assembly also called on United Nations Member States and international organizations to offer funding, technology and other resources to help poorer countries scale up...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Saturday that the country needed to cut down on its dependence on debt to finance its developmental programmes and find ways to reduce the current level of subsidies. "The financing of the plan expenditure has depended far too much on debt. This must change," said Singh while addressing a meeting of the National Development Council (NDC), the country's top policy forum. To fund its...

The public distribution system (PDS) has failed to deliver on its objectives in many parts of the country. It would then seem appropriate to dismantle the system immediately and replace it with food coupons or cash transfers to the eligible households. But evidence on ground illustrate that PDS has functioned well for years in southern states such as Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, with majority of the households purchasing...

The Centre wants all `kutcha' houses to be replaced by durable, disaster-resistant structures by 2016-17. It forms the big expression of intent in the first-of-its-kind `rural housing and habitat policy' that UPA may announce soon. The government wants to engage NGOs in rural housing, a sector the voluntary organisations have shunned till now. The government feels the rural populace will benefit from NGOs in the field of "technology dissemination" and...

SUKHRAM Gopal, a farmer from Bagli village in Devas district in Madhya Pradesh, relies on gut feel and tradition to be doubly sure that the rains will bless him with a bountiful harvest. On the day of the Gangaur festival, which typically falls in March-April and is a celebration of the monsoon and harvesting, Gopal starts sowing wheat. “Nine days later, if the seeds grow in a uniform manner, we...