-RuralMarketing.in/ i9media Organic farming is the mantra for prosperity of Naga women, and these hardworking women farmers have proved that they can be successful enterpreneurs. Women in the northeastern state of Nagaland traditionally enjoyed a high social position, within their family as well as in the community. A strong prevalence of patriarchy has ensured that they are not just kept away from key decision-making, but they are barred from inheriting ancestral...

-Live Mint The focus on implementation constraints is welcome; weak implementation has long been the Achilles heel of MGNREGS The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) faces an uncertain future. Statements from the government suggest that the scheme is set for a major revamp with infrastructure creation as its core objective. There are also rumours of a possible scaledown to backward regions. For the moment, however, the only concrete proposal...

Two political leaders from rival camps, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, have brought the spotlight on rural sanitation and have rooted for defecation-free India by investing in toilet construction on war footing. But a recent study by a group of eminent development economists led by Prof. Dean Spears-a visiting economist at the Delhi School of Economics - has concluded that when it comes to...

-Live Mint Sanitation in India has come a long way from being no one's priority to a politically salient issue Our politicians are finally talking toilets. From former minister Jairam Ramesh's infamous statement that India needed more toilets than temples to becoming a campaign issue in the recent elections, sanitation in India has come a long way from being no one's priority to a politically salient issue. On becoming Prime Minister, Narendra...

-Live Mint On a recent trip to rural Bihar, I spent several hours talking with headmasters and cluster officers about how to improve children's learning in primary school. Their responses were primarily complaints directed at others. Complaints about the administrative tasks expected of them; about the Right To Education Act's no-detention policy; about parents and their limited interest in the school and about students who rarely attended school. At no point...