Exposed, untreated excrement can kill by the million. One of the hardest-won UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is a 2015 target of halving the proportion of those without sustainable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Even if achieved, the target would still leave some 500 million on the planet without this basic requirement for survival and dignity. As many as 79 per cent of rural and 46 per...

With the work on the socio-economic development in the three Maoist-affected districts in West Bengal gathering pace, the State government said on Tuesday that it would complete by September the distribution of ration cards to poor tribals living there. Home Secretary Samar Ghosh told reporters that stress was on the distribution of ration cards, and the work progressed well. “This is part of the scheme formulated for the three districts within...

Activists and many residents blame a hydel project for the growing frequency of landslides in some Uttarakhand villages. THE nearly 3,500 residents of Bhatwadi village along the Uttarkashi-Gangotri highway in Uttarakhand saw their world come crashing down around them on the night of August 12/13. A massive landslide that hit the village formed cracks up to five metres wide on the highway and these crept up the hills to over 100...

Two days after the government scrapped a bauxite mining project in Orissa, Rahul Gandhi visited Niyamgiri, the ground zero of the anti-mine protests and told tribals that he was their sipahi in Delhi. Around the same time, farmers in Uttar Pradesh said they wouldn’t sell their land at the rates the government was offering. India is growing fast, but hassles over the acquisition of land are going to be the...

The differently-abled account for 5-7% of India’s population in the age group of 6-14 years, but they make up only 0.4% of its workforce. This large variance in the space of a few years can be explained by the disadvantages and discrimination the differently-abled face at every step, starting from the first: being counted. Civil society activists say various attempts by the government to identify and enumerate the differently-abled in...