-The Times of India BAREILLY: Used to the "comfortable fields", 90 families quietly demolished the toilets inside their house that was built under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA), preferring to go back to defecating in the open. Authorities, who sent notices to these "defaulters", reckon there may be many more in India's rural and semi-urban belts doing this, unable to break decades of habit. A bunch of others had removed the...

-The Hindu More than half the households in the country still lack access to sanitation. In its villages, some toilets built under past schemes exist only on paper. In 2019, India will observe the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, who gave the clarion call, "Clean up your own mess." But even 67 years after Independence, our cities and towns present a sorry picture replete with mounds of garbage, rotting sewers and...

**page** [inside]KEY TRENDS of the Union Budget 2023-24[/inside] Budget 2023-24 is the last full budget before the general election scheduled for 2024. An analysis of the budget allocations suggests that the union government has squeezed expenditure, particularly on food subsidy and the NREGA budget, while boosting Capital expenditure and giving the middle class tax benefits. Social sector activists working on Right to Food, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) came out with...