-The Telegraph Ahmedabad: If "pay and use" toilets can't slay the demon of open defecation, perhaps "get paid for not using" will. So believes the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, which plans to shame the city's dump-it-in-the-open brigade by catching them in the act every morning and paying them Re 1 on the spot. Will this not be an incentive for the offenders to stick to the old habit rather than shed it? Civic health...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: In Mahoba, one of Bundelkhand's most backward districts, a bank goes to the doorstep of the poorest to turn the idea of "right to food" into a reality. Managed by a group of 40 youngsters and 5 elders, the "Roti Bank" gives home-cooked rotis and vegetables to the needy every day. The youngsters knock on the doors of common residents, asking them to donate two rotis to...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...

-The Indian Express India’s largest nutrient maker tells The Indian Express how 11 crore farmers can directly receive subsidy now going to the industry. Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) of fertiliser subsidy to farmers is an eminently feasible proposition and the Narendra Modi government should lose no time in going ahead with its implementation, says US Awasthi of the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative (Iffco). “People interested in stalling DBT are giving all sorts of...

-CivilSocietyOnline.com Dehradun: Maletha village in Tehri Garhwal is very angry. Men, women and children sit on the road in dharna, demanding that a stone crushing company grandly called Satyam, Shivam, Sundaram be evicted from their village. The villagers’ problems began in February 2014 when two stone crushers arrived in Maletha with their machines. Their operations created an ear-splitting noise and belched clouds of dust that settled on crops and orchards. In August, another...