There is some positive news about national progress in sanitation and drinking water. A newly released report from UNICEF and WHO informs us that the country has witnessed 31 percent reduction in open defecation since 1990. This means 394 million Indians no more defecate in the open. The bad news, however, is that the progress in ‘population not practising open defecation’ among the poorest has been slower during the last 20...

Is the Government stepping back from its responsibility under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) by giving technical reasons? Civil society organizations, which struggled to enact the Right to Food legislation, doubt that this may be the case. It has been alleged recently by several civil society activists that the Government is rolling back the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), which is meant for food security of the extremely poor households,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: A joint parliamentary panel examining the Narendra Modi government's land acquisition bill has been flooded with objections to the proposed legislation from those who have deposed before it so far, sources have said. The Confederation of Indian Industry is the only one among 34 individuals and organisations to have supported the changes the bill seeks to make to the current law, passed in December 2013 under UPA rule,...

-The Indian Express Information was collected on a range of parameters at the individual and household levels like occupation, education, disability, religion, SC/ST status and employment. Nearly one in every three rural households still have an uncertain source of income and continue to live in one-room kutcha houses, according to the findings of the first national Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC). Officials told The Indian Express that these households — 31.26 per...

-Hindustan Times In all the heat being generated by the government’s amendments to the land acquisition law, the tribals are being left out in the cold. In his Mann Ki Baat broadcast Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed himself to “My dear farmer brothers and sisters”. He did not include the tribals. Perhaps farmers are in the spotlight because the tragedy of farmers’ suicides gives the opposition an emotive issue to raise in...