If this doesn’t raise a national stink, little else will. Around 3.5 crore toilets are missing in India, if official statistics are not meant to be flushed down the drain. The Union rural development ministry claims its Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) has delivered more than 8.71 crore latrines to households across villages over the past decade. But household data from the population census shows that only around 5.16 crore households had latrines...
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The sacred mountain And why tribals are willing to die for it-Bibhuti Pati
Natives of Niyamgiri feel that the police is acting as an agent of the Vedanta group, playing dirty tricks to help the company go ahead with its plans to mine bauxite from the sacred hills ONE OF the world’s most controversial mines is back in the spotlight after hundreds protested against renewed efforts to mine Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills. Dongria Kondh and Niyamgiri supporters held their own ‘public hearing’ in Odisha...
More »Lessons from Melghat’s health crisis-Pramit Bhattacharya
-Live Mint At a time when India plans a multi-pronged attack on malnutrition in 200 high-burden districts, it will pay to examine the cracks in state institutions that have led to past failures and can still derail well-intentioned plans. Melghat, a tribal corner in the northeastern fringes of India’s richest state—Maharashtra—is an apt example of almost everything that has gone wrong in India’s response to malnutrition and child deaths. Every 14th child dies...
More »CAG to audit MNREGS in 12 states, says Jairam Ramesh-Suchandana Gupta
-The Times of India Twelve states, including Madhya Pradesh, will go under the CAG scanner to audit alleged corruption and irregularities in the implementation of the Mahatma GandhiNational Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), a pet project of the UPA Centre. Out of the 12 states to be investigated, at least four are BJP-ruled, which are going to the polls in the next 18 months. BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka go to...
More »Imagine a poverty line-Surjit S Bhalla
No matter where you draw the line, the fall in poverty is greater in high GDP growth years Some plain facts and some ugly truths. The plain fact is that poverty in India has declined at a rapid pace during the UPA years post 2004. An ugly truth. When the Planning Commission released the estimates of poverty in India, on the basis of the household survey conducted by the NSS in...
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