Nahrani, a 38-year-old in Lalitpur, a village 30km from Jhansi, has an all-too-familiar tale to tell: a recently deceased husband; the lack of a ration card which promises access to free or inexpensive food; and a village without water, power, schools or health centres. Not one child from the 50-odd families in this village goes to school. The menfolk are perennially drifting, looking for jobs. And no one has heard...

Madvi Madka owns 4ha of land in Chingavaram in the Sukum block in central India. The district in which the block is located has become infamous after 6 April, killing of 76 policemen by the Maoists. This is the ground zero of the war between the Indian state and the Maoists, and Madka, who owns 4ha of land—often left fallow because there wasn’t enough water for irrigation—here used to make...

For a man who’s been in the pharmaceutical business all his working life, advocating clean drinking water across the country might seem like a bad business idea. In fact, its health fallout could put me out of business. But there are times when one has to think beyond the balance sheets. Water is one issue that excites passion, yet we give very little thought to it. Those who have seen...

Leads to cancer and fluorosis that damages bones, teeth, muscles  West Bengal is the worst-affected State in terms of arsenic contamination “The problem is being ignored because those who must address it consume bottled water” About 1.80-lakh rural habitations are afflicted by poor water quality leading to serious health problems such as cancer and fluorosis that damages bones, teeth and muscles. Arsenic contamination has been reported in nine States, fluoride problem in 18...

A decade-old scheme to organize the rural poor into self-help groups and impart training to them has brought hundreds of thousands above the poverty line, says the rural development ministry, which executes the programme. Some 4.5 million people living below the poverty line have been trained under the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana, or SGSY, while 3.5 million self-help groups (SHGs) have been created since its launch in 1999. An evaluation of SGSY...