-Down to Earth Lack of access to sanitation wiped off US $106.7 billion from India's GDP in 2015. It is almost half of the total global losses A report—True cost of sanitation—was published jointly by the LIXIL Group Corporation, Water Aid and Oxford Economics recently. Oxford Economics mainly works on economic forecasting and modelling. It says that in 2015 lack of access to sanitation cost the global economy around US $ 222.9...

-The Financial Express For India, a looming freshwater crisis—the World Bank already puts the country’s per capita renewable freshwater resources at less than a fifth of the world, far behind the other four in the list of top-five populous countries—is set to become a nightmare. A study published in Nature Geoscience has found that, upto a depth of 200 metres, 60% of the groundwater in the Indian part of the Indo-Gangetic...

-The Hindu It has long been argued that government spending on health should increase to 2.5 per cent of GDP. National Health Accounts (NHA) monitors the flow of resources in a country’s health system and provides detailed data on health finances. The NHA estimates for India for the financial year 2013-14 were published earlier this week, after a long void of almost a decade. The previous estimates were for the year 2004-05. In...

The state of Jharkhand has been in the news recently but for the wrong reasons. The NREGS workers who worked for constructing dobhas (small farm ponds) across the state during April to June 2016 have been treated unfairly by the officials in the sense that they were not paid their due wages, alleges a group of local activists. Despite complaints being made by the aggrieved workers, no action has been...

-The Indian Express Farm incomes may not revive despite good monsoon. There are new challenges for policymakers. India’s per capita calorie demand has been falling for at least the last 30 years. Most people do a double-take when they hear that. One can’t debate the fact much: National Sample Surveys every five to seven years have documented this. What we can debate are the reasons behind this: In their 2009 paper Angus...