-The Hindu After standing in waist to neck-deep water for the past two weeks as part of their jal satyagraha , oustees of the Omkareshwar dam project have successfully managed to make the Madhya Pradesh government sit up and take notice. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan has deputed Industries Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya and Tribal Affairs Minister Vijay Shah to tour the site of the jal satyagraha and work out a solution. The...

-The Economic Times The Centre plans to make bank creditaccess easier for rural population, especially in states were poverty is high. In Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, the gap between credit available to self help groups and the demand for credit is stark. At present, 80 per cent of all bank support to SHGs is in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala. In Uttar Pradesh, Madhya...

-The Hindu Instead of rigid targeting, the government must build on the success of the public distribution system which is quietly becoming a significant means of social support In earlier writings, we have drawn attention to the quiet revival of the public distribution system (PDS) in many States during the last few years. Market prices of PDS commodities — mainly rice and wheat — have sharply increased, giving people a much greater...

-The Times of India In the cleaning of nearly 13 lakh insanitary dry toilets across the country, human beings and animals play an almost equal role, the Supreme Court was told on Monday. In what could deal a severe blow to the sanitation claims of successive governments, petitioner NGO 'Safai Karmachari Andolan' culled out data from the 2011 census report to inform the court that 4.97 lakh dry toilets were "serviced by...

-The Indian Express Gujarat is growing, but its children remain undernourished Even as Gujarat surpasses many Indian states with impressive investments in infrastructure, agriculture, and general economic growth, little is known about how this growth is affecting the state’s social indicators. The recent buzz about the causes of undernutrition in Gujarat raise a number of issues about social and cultural preferences. However, this can be interpreted only in the broader context of...