A new report on India's housing sector confirms with facts and figures what has been suspected all along: that despite growing demand for affordable housing, supply side responses have been weak and sluggish. This means even though the housing sector can directly impact employment and income generation, and has multiple forward and backward linkages with various industries, it needs innovative ideas, pro-poor thinking and policy stimulus. (See link below for...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Two government agencies - the census office and the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) - have come up with two completely different estimates of India's slum population, leaving both policy makers and the aam aadmi puzzled. The difference is so big that it can't be papered over by any technical jugglery. It has again raised suspicions of India's statistical system floundering, especially when it comes...

-Live Mint The Indian state has done little to provide preventive public health services New data released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) have once again underlined the abysmal state of sanitation in the country, particularly in rural India where two-thirds of the country lives. Only 32% of rural households have their own toilets, according to the recently released results of a large-scale survey conducted by NSSO in 2012. An additional...

A new report from Right to Sanitation Campaign in India entitled: In Deep Shit paints a gloomy picture about the position of India's sanitation, and simultaneously draws our attention to the case of ‘missing' and ‘dead' toilets. The report has questioned the claims made by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS) that India is making great strides in availing toilets to its rural population through the Nirmal Bharat...

-The Business Standard Policymaking in India is more often than not credited for its high nuisance value, rather than for positively aiding growth. Whether oil & gas, power, mining or any other core sector of the economy, government policy has frequently hampered rather than assisted the positive development of these industries. There is however one segment of the renewable energy space - solar power, that's vastly benefitted from concerted government action...