Although public goods are meant for everyone to enable living life with human dignity, certain groups are systematically deprived to access them, says a new report from the Centre for Equity Studies -- a NGO based in Delhi. Put differently, not all sections of the society are able to access or enjoy public goods and services on an equal footing, despite social justice being one of the key provisions of...

-Theweekendleader.com/ Women's Feature Service Purulia (West Bengal): It was ironical that Purulia district often found itself on the West Bengal government's 'drought-hit' list when the average rainfall here is 1100mm-1500mm. The failure to conserve water as well as poor agricultural practices meant that despite back-breaking labour in the fields, farmers could only achieve six months' food sufficiency. Today, however, all that is changing thanks to a water management revolution led by ordinary village...

Representatives of around 20 civil society organizations and NGOs met the Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley as part of pre-budget consultation on social sector on 12 January, 2016. Immediately after the pre-budget consultation, a press conference was held by some of these organizations to convey the media persons what demands/ suggestions were made.   Subrat Das, Executive Director of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA, http://www.cbgaindia.org/) informed us that during...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A recent sample survey carried out by the government on the usage of toilets seeks to disprove the notion that access to toilets may not automatically change attitudes of people who prefer defecating in the open. According to NSSO findings, at least 95% of family members in rural areas and around 99% household members in urban areas used toilets, which had access to toilets. The sample...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Showing remarkable progress, 89 lakh individual household latrines have been built in rural areas in the past one year. According to government figures, the big Swachh Bharat push in rural areas has increased the access of toilets to 46.9% from only 32.6% in 2011 across the country. However, urban areas in poll-bound Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have built only 927 and 862 household latrines respectively...