-The Indian Express Families have a preferred number of sons at any given fertility level as well as a preferred fertility level.   In his maiden Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lamented the neglect of daughters, restrictions on their movements, parental attitudes that favoured sons, shameful rapes of girls and women, the lack of toilet facilities and sanitation. In a populist vein, he urged parents to treat sons and daughters...

-Outlook Giving a big push to Prime Narendra Modi's ambitious Clean India mission, the government today proposed a major hike in funds provided for constructing household toilets in rural areas and providing better sanitation facilities in schools and anganwadis. In yet another move, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, who is also in-charge of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, announced the decision to delink MNREGA from toilet construction programme, saying that the...

-The Indian Express A government shorn of Western educated ministers could change the status quo. Since 1947, Indians have not spoken out so strongly and clearly for a completely new brand of people running government. Mercifully, there are no ministers educated abroad. Thankfully, none of them has been brainwashed at Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, the World Bank or the IMF, subtly forcing expensive Western solutions on typically Indian problems at the cost of...

-Down to Earth Women of a Maharashtra hamlet give husbands an ultimatum-build toilets or go without food TOILETS ARE not an issue over which one sees agitations every day. And when it comes to women agitating against husbands, it may well be an unprecedented situation. Yet, the women of Amgaon, a tiny village in Wardha district of Maharashtra, did just that. On June 24, they staged a choolband, or no-cooking protest, forcing...

-The Times of India Mitu Kumari, in charge of a government school in Patahin, a village on the outskirts of Muzaffarpur, Bihar, has a measured enthusiasm for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement that toilets for girls will be built in schools that still don't have this basic facility. For her 146 students and three women teachers, absence of toilets is an intolerable problem. "I have written to everybody, from the village mukhia...