-BBC When Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his Independence Day speech, vowed to eliminate open defecation, India took notice. After all, it was unusual for a prime minister to use the bully pulpit in India to exhort people to end this appalling practice and build more toilets. A staggering 70% of Indians living in villages - or some 550 million people - defecate in the open. Even 13% of urban households do so....
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How Women Pay the Price for Population Control -Ruhi Kandhari
-Tehelka Despite the serious toll it takes on women's health, female sterilisation remains the most prevalent form of contraception in India. While memories of the 21 months of Emergency in 1975-77, imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, survives even today in the minds of Indian men as the fear of forced sterilisation, the country's population control policies have shifted over the years since then to target the politically less...
More »Electrified, but without electricity -Rahul Tongia
-The Hindu India needs a meaningful electricity service, not merely a wire connection to every household No one would believe that simply owning a smart phone would be enough to go online and get connected - one would still need a data connection for that to happen. Similarly, it is time that we added a similar level of service to define electrification, a focus area for the government. A decade ago, a village...
More »Only 12% deficit in monsoon rainfall: Why is the picture of rural economy still uncertain? -Jayashree Bhosale & Avinash Celestine
-The Economic Times Dinkar Patil, a farmer from Buldhana district in Vidarbha, Maharashtra, normally cultivates cotton on his 13-acre farm land. This year, however, he has skipped the cotton crop and opted for soyabean and tur dal. "The rainfall started late. I did not cultivate cotton because of the delayed rains and the huge increase in cost of cultivation of the crop," said Patil. He is expecting a fall of about...
More »Only 31 days of work per household provided under rural job scheme this year -Ruhi Tewari
-The Indian Express The government at the Centre may have changed, but the performance of the flagship rural job guarantee scheme continues to remain dismal, with households not getting work for even one third of the mandated 100 days (annually) on an average so far this year. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), introduced in February 2006, promises 100 days of employment every year to each rural household. A...
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