-The Indian Express According to government data, percentage of households without toilets in Odisha is an alarming 88 per cent. Odisha and Bihar, two states which have consistently demanded a special category status from the Centre on account of being backward, figure among the worst states in India when it comes to household toilets. According to the Baseline Survey – 2012 report of the Swachh Bharat MISsion under the aegis of the Ministry...

-The Indian Express As per the earlier proposal, the Centre was to provide for 75 per cent of the construction cost of rental units. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveils the ‘Housing for All’ by 2022 on Thursday, rental housing, proposed with an outlay of Rs 6,000 crore, will now be MISsing from the NDA government’s flagship shelter MISsion. According to officials, the MISsion originally had provisions for creation of urban rental...

  If environmental degradation disturbs you and you are averse to reading technical manuals and copious volumes on the subject, there is some good news for you.    A recently published book from Gene Campaign entitled Coping with Climate Change is doing the rounds among environmentalists, civil society activists, public servants and researchers. Edited by Dr. Suman Sahai, the book has been written in a coffee book style to make easy serious...

-IndiaSpend.com A wealth of laws and programmes instituted to protect girls are failing them in India’s two most economically-developed states, Maharashtra and Gujarat, according to recent reports by the central government auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). Both states are failing to implement the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PC & PNT), which prohibits sex selection, before or after conception, and regulates diagnostic techniques to prevent MISuse for...

-The Hindu Two years after vociferously arguing for an expansion of the provisions of the National Food Security Act, the BJP in government is bleeding it with a thousand cuts, both fiscal and otherwise When Parliament passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013, it had already become one of the most debated pieces of legislation in decades. Those for and against it had fought it out across yards of space...