-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...
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Swachch Bharat Mission: It's not just about building toilets -Sangita Vyas
-The Business Standard Ending open defecation by 2019 will require changing minds, not just allocating money to build latrines for people that will either go unused or not be built at all During Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech, we learned that his Swachch Bharat Mission to eliminate open defecation in India by Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary, would begin in less than two months on October 2. What was...
More »Think clean and then build toilets, let's not flush the opportunity away -KumKum Dasgupta
-The Hindustan Times India's record, when it comes to sanitation, has been most unsanitary. Of the estimated billion people who defecate in the open across the world, more than half are here. Poor sanitation impairs the health of Indians, leading to high rates of malnutrition and productivity losses. According to the World Bank, India's sanitation deficit leads to losses worth 6% of GDP. In such a scenario, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's...
More »Climate change — what’s that? -Radhika Mittal
-The Hindu Business Line Most Indians are not aware of, or responsive to, the issue. For this, the media is squarely responsible The Ministry of Environment and Forests is now the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Including climate change as a key component in the title of the ministry is all very well, but how do we envisage taking climate change and its everyday implications to the masses? A 2011 Yale...
More »Reinforcing the welfare agenda -Harsh Mander
-Live Mint Voters who gave the Congress its worst drubbing did not reject its welfare agenda, but its performance There are many who interpret the emphatic rejection of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the significant endorsement of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the elections of 2014 as a mandate to end the architecture of rights-based legislation for social and economic welfare constructed during the 10-year UPA regime. Commentators opposed...
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