-TheWire.in Examples from Jharkhand, Karnataka and other places make a strong case for kitchen gardens in more parts of the country. Pali Biruli lives in Gondamara, a tribal village in Saraikela district of Jharkhand. When we stepped into the courtyard of her home to have a glass of water, the beauty of the surrounding greenery surprised us. Within a small place. she and her family members had managed to grow papaya, mango,...

-The Indian Express Únion Budget 2018: Budget addresses the crises in agriculture. The devil is in the allocations All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. In Anna Karenina, only if a person is satisfied on all counts will she be happy. The allocations in the budget cover every sector, with umpteen implications, and no person’s expectations can be fulfilled on all counts. While every...

-Business Standard The Commission says incentives for states will be decided, among others, by "control or lack of it in incurring expenditure on populist measures" New Delhi: States offering debt waivers or slipping on centrally funded programmes, such as Swacch Bharat, could get penalised, according to the terms set for the 15th Finance Commission. The terms of reference of the Commission, set up by the central government this week, makes these conditions...

-The Times of India VARANASI: In 2013, Temsutula Imsong moved to Varanasi and with a group of friends completely changed the look of several ghats along the Ganga. Imsong, who is from Nagaland, worked for days with her colleagues from NGO Sakaar, to manually clean the ghats that were full of garbage and excreta. Her work was even acknowledged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Now, when most ghats are being looked after by...

-TheWire.in Innovate methods are being used to encourage people to end open defecation, but issues like the underutilisation of funds and use of coercive methods to achieve targets remain. The government has run rural sanitation programmes since the 1980s. Yet, according to Census 2011, only about 30% of all rural households have toilets, and even fewer use those toilets. By contrast, under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, several changes have taken place. Efforts towards...