-The Times of India PATNA: With election round the corner, politicians are making promises. One such promise has been made by CM Nitish Kumar: If voted to power, he would ensure piped water reaches every household in Bihar. Sceptics ask how come as basic a human need as safe drinking water was not made available to the people of Bihar by their successive government in 68 years since independence. Piped water connection...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The war against dengue and other deadly mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and chikungunya appears to have been lost in Delhi. While the focus has been on the paucity of hospital beds for dengue patients, no one is asking the real question: what has been done to prevent the outbreak of vector-borne diseases, year after year? Why have things come to this pass? Far from girding...

-Economic and Political Weekly While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives...

-The Hindu New Delhi: In a move that spells relief for an estimated 40 lakh residents staying in unauthorised colonies and also that would deliver on a promise made by successive governments, but ever fulfilled, the Delhi Government on Tuesday set the ball rolling on regularisation of such colonies. Residents of 1,650 such colonies can apply for the registration of their respective properties soon. "In a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal...

Quite opposite to the top-down model of budgeting, the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party-led Government in Delhi has decided to go for a 'citizen-centric' budget planning at 'mohalla'-level for the fiscal year 2015-16. Drawing lessons from the success stories of participatory budgeting conducted at municipal-level in cities like Porto Alegre (Brazil), the AAP-led Delhi Government has decided to launch this form of decentralized budgeting on a pilot basis in a...