-The Hindu An estimated 10 million people in nine districts of West Bengal drink arsenic-laden groundwater. Priyanka Pulla finds that despite alarms having been sounded over decades, the State government has moved at a glacial pace to tackle the crisis, while people struggle to cope with the symptoms On a Thursday morning at the government primary school in Madhusudankati, a village in West Bengal’s North 24 Parganas district, a gaggle of five-year-olds...

-CaravanMagazine.in The economist Jean Drèze’s book, Sense and SoliDarity, published in late 2017, deals with the impact of Aadhaar on social-welfare programmes, such as the National Food Security Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, among other things. Drèze was a member of the United Progressive Alliance government’s advisory council, which designed the NFSA and MGNREGS. He co-authored some of the essays in this book with colleagues and...

-Down to Earth In a recent event, BJP MLA Gopal Parmar said that child marriage is the solution to many problems like ‘love jihad’, elopement and divorce In the light of rampant child marriages and related suffering of women in India, British India debated ‘Age of Consent Bill’ in 1880s when an 11-year-old Bengali girl, Phulmani, died after her husband had brutally raped her.  Since then, India has crossed many milestones: getting...

-India Today The government of India claimed that all villages in the country have been electrified. New Delhi: Prime Minister Modi tweeted, "28th April 2018 will be remembered as a historic day in the development journey of India. Yesterday, we fulfilled a commitment due to which the lives of several Indians will be transformed forever! I am delighted that every single village of India now has access to electricity." The Prime Minister specifically...

-India Water Portal The editor of a new book that lays out alternative futures for India discusses India, democracy and development with a noted journalist. Alternative Futures: India Unshackled is a new book that Dares to imagine what India could be. Published by Authors Upfront, 35 author-activists, researchers and thinkers have drawn upon their experiences to write on alternative political, ecological, economic and sociocultural scenarios that will benefit India in its...