-The Economic Times After Mahatma Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh is the only national leader to be genuinely concerned that 65 years after Independence, some 600 million Indians in the 21st century continue to use open skies as their latrines. While Lee Kuan Yew continues to exhort Singaporeans to have cleaner loos, our ministry of railways thinks depositing human excreta all along the country's length and breadth, including deep into the cities -...

-Frontline After the year-long Jansamvad Yatra and Jansatyagraha, the Ekta Parishad has a written commitment from the Rural Development Ministry to advance land reforms.  Celebration and caution. These sentiments dominated the deliberations of senior activists of the Ekta Parishad as they gathered at Delhi’s Gandhi Peace Foundation office on October 18, one week after the organisation and the Union government had signed a 10-point agreement to advance land reforms. The agreement had...

-The Hindu Taking up the cause of persons with mental illness, their families and care-givers, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has asked State governments to explore the possibility of identifying employment opportunities under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme that are particularly suitable for such people. Citing a recent government order of the Rural Development and Panchayati Raj Department of Tamil Nadu, through which guidelines have been laid...

-The Hindu The country has shown that it is possible to have superior social outcomes at lower per capita incomes and rates of economic growth Bangladesh is very much in the news these days in our country, but for the wrong reasons. In the unfortunate Bangladesh-bashing that seems to have become somewhat of a pastime, we seem to have failed to notice the striking developmental success that it has had in the...

-The Hindu In her article in The Hindu, (“Nailing the lie of the land,” Op-Ed, August 23, 2012), Ms Medha Patkar has forcefully and with reason argued against the devastating consequences of land acquisition. Without getting into the concerns raised with regard to the larger “development model” we would like to respond to the issues she has raised with the proposed Bill on Land Acquisition which seem predicated on an understanding...