-Economic and Political Weekly While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives...

-The Hindu The programme reduced poverty by up to 32 per cent and prevented 14 million people from falling into poverty. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) reduced poverty by up to a third and gave a large number of women their first opportunity to earn cash income, a new research has found. Officials from the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER)...

-FAO September’s post-2015 development agenda summit of heads of state and government may well attract global headlines this year, but much of the really significant work is being executed behind the scenes. As statisticians lock heads to come up with a workable indicator framework to measure and monitor the ambitious Agenda, Vikas Rawal, Associate Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, describes the make-up...

-The Hindu The Attorney General’s argument questioning the right of Indians to privacy is wrong on two counts. But worse, it goes against the interests of the people on every count. The last ten days have spelt dark times for the right to privacy. On one hand, the DNA Profiling Bill, which may result in a database of sensitive personal data with little to prevent its misuse, is being tabled in Parliament....

-Hindustan Times London: With the global population expected to touch 9 billion by 2050, food from forests in India and elsewhere have potential to address needs of nutrition and food security at a time when the limits of boosting agricultural production are becoming increasingly clear. A new report produced by an international panel led by Bhaskar Vira, an expert based at the University of Cambridge, says that  despite impressive productivity increases, there...