-The Times of India BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh may clock fastest growth rate in the country, but it still hugs the lowest rung in national rankings when it comes to primary education. This time though, the rankings are by Union HRD ministry and not a private foundation. Almost half of students of Class III in the state cannot read and understand simple text while one third cannot do addition and subtraction. The...
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Freedom from Open Defecation Role of the Community -Nitin Dhaktode
-Economic and Political Weekly Open defecation is a major health hazard and causes enormous hardship, especially to rural women. Government funds for constructing toilets have to be supplemented with awareness campaigns to motivate ordinary people to do their part. Sarola, a village in Maharashtra, was able to become "open defecation free" with effective community participation, taking advantage of the Sant Gadgebaba Gram Swachhata Abhiyan. Toilets were built in every house, along...
More »Revival of rural Public Distribution System Expansion and Outreach -Andaleeb Rahman
-Economic and Political Weekly This paper quantifies the improvements in the public distribution system in rural India after 2004-05 using data from three rounds of surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey. It finds that Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh continue to be the leading performers, but early movers such as Odisha saw improvements in the functioning of the PDS between 2004-05 and 2009-10. In late movers such as Bihar and...
More »Deciphering India through data -Padmaparna Ghosh
-The Times of India Prem Das Rai, an MP from Sikkim, knew that development indicators from his state were exceptional. But his office didn't know how to showcase them. He reached out to Swaniti, a Delhi-based not-for-profit organization that has been working "consulting style" with parliamentarians. Their portal called Jigyasa aims to answer questions like Rai's. Rwitwika Bhattacharya, Swaniti's founder-CEO, was surprised at what they uncovered. "I always thought that the...
More »Too many people still lack basic drinking water and sanitation –UN report
-The United Nations Despite a narrowing disparity in access to cleaner water and better sanitation between rural and urban areas, sharp inequalities still persist around the world, says a new United Nations report. According to the 2014 Joint Monitoring Report on global progress against the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on water and sanitation, more than half of the global population lives in cities, and urban areas are still better supplied with improved...
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