-The Hindu   The official sanitation policy has been uniquely focussed on building toilets. But the connection between good health and using toilets has not yet been made When the road in front of his house is finally laid, in Fatehpur, Uttar Pradesh, Ramesh Kumar hopes he will get permission to set up a small shop in a corner of his compound. Another corner will have a temple, as his father wants. To...

-The Hindu   The rising tide of female voters in 2014 might have had a concrete impact on the outcome of these elections, data shows. Despite the Election Commission's efforts to get more women registered to vote, the number of female electors (those registered to vote) grew much slower than the number of male electors, between 2009 and 2014, The Hindu found. Men registered to vote outnumber women by over 40 million, giving...

-The Hindu   This election has created new trends and narratives even as it has sharpened old ones, says Rukmini S. through an analysis of electoral data High voter turnouts are frequently believed to be indicative of anti-incumbency. Following the record-breaking 66.7 per cent voter turnout this time, political parties and some in the media declared that this meant that the country had voted for change. Yet The Hindu's analysis shows that there...

-The Hindu   The Supreme Court's judgment upholding the validity of Article 21A and the Right to Education Act has gutted the operative provisions of the law While free and compulsory education for all children below the age of 14 has been a constitutional imperative for the government for the last 64 years, it is a matter of fact (and shame) that successive governments have not achieved this yet. The most concerted effort...

-The Hindu   ‘An offshoot of trickle-down urbanisation, census towns like Hatia and Hinjewadi can be engines of change for rural areas' Hatia, Ranchi: At the southern edge of Ranchi city lies Hatia, and not all of its residents are sure if theirs is a village or part of Ranchi city's sprawl into its surrounding rural areas. "It's still a village. The panchayat has the land records," says Santosh Majhi, standing by the side...