700 million Indians have cell phones, but 638 million still don’t have access to proper sanitation. At this year’s South Asian Conference on Sanitation, social solutions to the problem were discussed, including “naming and shaming” and the CLTS programme which gets villagers to map the open areas where they defecate There can hardly be a bigger taboo than sanitation when it comes to the government, bureaucracy or even the people...

Trouble-mongers will think twice before creating nuisance within polling booth premises during the Assembly elections in West Bengal as live videos of more than 1,000 critical booths will be directly monitored by the Election Commission through ‘web-casting.' The general public will also be able to stream the live videos by logging on to the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer's site. A first-time initiative in the State elections, the technique will be put...

Peasant leader and RTI activist Akhil Gogoi’s long drawn campaign against corruption reached a crescendo today with police detaining him for violating Section 144 while taking out a procession in support of Anna Hazare’s movement for the new Lok Pal Bill. He was later released. Hundreds of people spilled onto the streets of Assam, particularly in Upper Assam, today after police detained the RTI activist. Akhil was first stopped in the middle...

It is difficult to predict what denouement the spat between the Sheikh Hasina-led Bangladesh Government and Mohammed Yunus, the Noble Laureate, would ultimately reach but it has undoubtedly brought to the fore many pitfalls of the micro-credit system which has so far been hailed as a panacea for poverty alleviation not just in the Third World countries but in many developed nations too. It may be a bit unfair to...

Anna Hazare and his supporters appear to have come to an agreement with the central government over forming a joint committee to draft the Lokpal bill.  We can all agree that corruption in India is a cancer eating away at the very core of the nation. Amidst the frenzied coverage of the hunger strike, and the exclamations of support for Hazare on social networks, there has been scant discussion of...