-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....
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Only 12% deficit in monsoon rainfall: Why is the picture of rural economy still uncertain? -Jayashree Bhosale & Avinash Celestine
-The Economic Times Dinkar Patil, a farmer from Buldhana district in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, normally cultivates cotton on his 13-acre farm land. This year, however, he has skipped the cotton crop and opted for soyabean and tur dal. "The rainfall started late. I did not cultivate cotton because of the delayed rains and the huge increase in cost of cultivation of the crop," said Patil. He is expecting a fall of about...
More »Toilet-training India
-The Business Standard Social attitudes as important as money It is appropriate to use Gandhi Jayanti to launch a fresh campaign, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, to end open defecation, a goal that has eluded three previous missions spanning decades. It is vitally important to address the question of sanitation as Gandhi had - as a question of social reform, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's appeal that government officials set an example is valuable....
More »Only 31 days of work per household provided under rural job scheme this year -Ruhi Tewari
-The Indian Express The government at the Centre may have changed, but the performance of the flagship rural job guarantee scheme continues to remain dismal, with households not getting work for even one third of the mandated 100 days (annually) on an average so far this year. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), introduced in February 2006, promises 100 days of employment every year to each rural household. A...
More »For Jan Dhan, banks to lend Rs 1.65 lakh cr via overdraft -George Mathew
-The Indian Express The government is aiming to lend Rs 165,000 crore to the poor and unbanked population through the overdraft facility at an interest rate of 11 per cent under its ongoing Jan Dhan financial inclusion programme. "It is estimated that there are 18.2 crore basic banking accounts and. by the end of the campaign another 15 crore accounts would get added. An overdraft of Rs 5,000 in each of these...
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