-Financial Express An overwhelming number of Indians have claimed that they don’t have access to toilets, poking holes in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion of India having become open-defecation free under Swachh Bharat. But the NSO, which conducted the survey, also said that the respondents could not be fully trusted, and that they may have lied to underreport the access to toilets. About 30% of rural households lacked access to toilets...

-Business Standard Around 71.3 per cent of rural households and 96.2 per cent of urban households had access to toilets during 2018, according to the survey More than one-fourth of households in villages have no access to toilets, according to the latest official survey conducted by the National Statistical Office (NSO). Around 71.3 per cent of rural households and 96.2 per cent of urban households had access to toilets during 2018, according to...

-The Hindu The campaign to end open defecation can succeed only if it takes communities with it India’s declaration on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi that its rural areas are now open defecation-free will be acknowledged around the world as a milestone in its developmental journey. Cleanliness and sanitation were central to Gandhi’s concerns for his vast number of impoverished countrymen, and should ideally have been pursued zealously by governments...

-The Hindu Business Line The government must simplify and rationalise GST, kickstart rural consumption, revive agriculture and tackle the lack of credit for capital creation, says former PM Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an eminent economist himself, feels that the Narendra Modi-led government needs to come out of its habit of headline management and address the economic challenges which the country is facing today. “We cannot afford to deny that India is facing...

-The Hindu The agenda to set up a development bank is a welcome initiative, but questions remain on its design Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s press conference on August 23, announcing a slew of measures to boost the economy and financial market sentiments, had an interesting idea. It was about setting up a development bank. Ms. Sitharaman said: “In order to improve access to long-term finance, it is proposed to establish an organisation to...