-The Hindu   Even villages with higher toilet coverage, and households that had some family members using the toilet did not see any difference in health Is building toilets improving health in India? New evidence has raised troubling questions about India's 25-year strategy of pushing people to use toilets as a way to improve health. In a paper published on Friday morning in the medical journal Lancet, researchers led by Thomas Clasen of the U.S.-based...

-United Nations Food markets are more stable and prices for most agricultural commodities are sharply lower than they have been in recent years, according to the latest edition of the biannual Food Outlook report released today by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). According to a statement released by the Rome-based FAO, bumper harvests and abundant stockpiles are key factors helping drive down international food prices. World wheat production in 2014...

-FirstPost.com Farmer suicides haven't gone up in Maharashtra: Why is Modi tweaking data? Prime Minister Narendra Modi is aggressively attempting to make the high incidence of farmers's suicide in Maharashtra an important election issue. The BJP is probably trying to make inroads in rural Maharashtra where it is not known to be strong traditionally. Modi has quoted government statistics to suggest Maharashtra has had more than 10 farmers committing suicide every day. Needless...

-ABPLive.in New Delhi: A host of activists and academics have appealed to Narendra Modi to nip any move to dilute the 100-day village job scheme after rural development minister Nitin Gadkari brushed aside objections from within his own ministry. In a letter signed by over a hundred citizens, the signatories that included Aruna Roy, Nikhil Dey, Jean Dreze, Harsh Mander, Prabhat Patnaik and Abhijit Sen sought the Prime Minister's "immediate assurance" that...

-FirstPost.com With the hype of his Madison Square Garden show overshadowing everything else, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's US visit was dubbed as a great bilateral victory for India. As the popular consensus went, Modi wowed both the Indian Americans and American politicians and even managed to get a joint op-ed article with President Barack Obama in the Washington Post stressing the importance of the partnership between the two countries. Was it really...