-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Overriding objections raised by senior officials, rural development minister Nitin Gadkari has ordered far-reaching changes in the job guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) which has provided seasonal work to one in three rural households in the last eight years. Documents obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by activists show file notings by a senior official in the ministry arguing that Gadkari's announcements run contrary to the...
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Why India's sanitation crisis needs more than toilets -Soutik Biswas
-BBC When Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech, vowed to eliminate open defecation, India took notice. After all, it was unusual for a prime minister to use the bully pulpit in India to exhort people to end this appalling practice and build more toilets. A staggering 70% of Indians living in villages - or some 550 million people - defecate in the open. Even 13% of urban households do so....
More »How Women Pay the Price for Population Control -Ruhi Kandhari
-Tehelka Despite the serious toll it takes on women's health, female sterilisation remains the most prevalent form of contraception in India. While memories of the 21 months of Emergency in 1975-77, imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, survives even today in the minds of Indian men as the fear of forced sterilisation, the country's population control policies have shifted over the years since then to target the politically less...
More »Centre asks state to build storage capacity before launching food security scheme -Dipak K Dash
-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The central government is not in a hurry to push states to implement Food Security Act (FSA) without first building adequate capacity. The food ministry has even sought details of the preparedness in states where the act is in force. Sources said that only two more states - Assam and Uttarakhand - have informed the ministry about their readiness to launch the scheme. So far 11...
More »Groundwater reserves dwindle to critical level amid rampant extraction -Akash Vashishtha
-India Today Groundwater is being extracted in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan at a rate faster than it's replenished, according to the latest report of the Central Ground Water Board (CGWB). The status of groundwater extraction - the proportion of water drawn out to annual recharge - in Delhi and the three states is more than 100 per cent. In Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Lakshwadeep, Pondicherry and Daman and Diu, the...
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