-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...

-The Hindu   If Gujarat is a model, then the real toppers in development indicators, like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, must be supermodels In an earlier article published on this page ("The Gujarat Muddle," April 11, 2014), I pointed out that Gujarat's development achievements were hardly "model" class. This is pretty firm ground: the same point has been made by a long list of eminent economists. Yet confusion persists, so I decided to...

-Economic and Political Weekly   Open defecation is a major health hazard and causes enormous hardship, especially to rural women. Government funds for constructing toilets have to be supplemented with awareness campaigns to motivate ordinary people to do their part. Sarola, a village in Maharashtra, was able to become "open defecation free" with effective community participation, taking advantage of the Sant Gadgebaba Gram Swachhata Abhiyan. Toilets were built in every house, along...

-The Financial Express   In what could be a big question mark on the world's largest jobs scheme. In what could be a big question mark on the world's largest jobs scheme, the number of people who availed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) fell 8.4% year-on-year in 2013-14, reports Raj Kumar Ray in New Delhi. Also, only a tenth of the people enrolled got the promised 100 days of...

-Economic and Political Weekly Multiplicity of ration cardholder lists has been found to be a cause for exclusion of the needy from access to subsidised food. A report from Allahabad district of Uttar Pradesh. Aman (amannlu@gmail.com) is a lawyer, currently clerking with a judge at the International Criminal Court, The Hague. Ashutosh Agrawal (ashutosha.56@gmail.com) is studying Economics and Physics at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. The authors would like to thank Jean Drèze...