-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Supreme Court today pulled up the Maharashtra government for "not taking any interest" although hundreds of children had died of malnutrition in the state's drought-affected regions. "You don't bother when people die of malnutrition because you think it is a small figure in a country with a large population," a bench of Justices Madan B. Lokur and N.V. Ramana told a lawyer who appeared for the BJP-led...

-The Indian Express The bench pointed out that several districts in the country had received deficient rainfall and a situation like last year could emerge again when delay in declaring drought had affected relief work. The Supreme Court Wednesday warned the Centre against repeating last year’s mistake and asked it to declare a drought condition well in time to tackle the situation better. “We are concerned about the approach. You should change your...

-PTI “Don’t dig the well when the house is on fire,” the Supreme Court on Wednesday observed as it warned the Centre of not repeating last year’s “mistakes” in tackling the drought situation in various parts of the country this time. Asking the government to be ready with relief measures for drought in certain parts of country this year, the apex court said: “We are concerned about the approach. You should change...

-Huffington Post Accountability Initiative finds rural India lacking in awareness of Swachh Bharat schemes. A survey of 7,500 rural households has found that 29% of Swachh Bharat toilets exist only on paper and of those that have been built, 36% are unusable. The survey was conducted by Accountability Initiative at the Centre for Policy Research in December 2015, across 10 districts in five states. The states included Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet Swachh Bharat initiative may be celebrating two years with much fanfare on Sunday but just a fifth of the respondents in a recent nationwide survey say local municipalities have improved garbage collection or cleanliness. The study found the hygiene has visibly improved in only four states – three of them ruled by the BJP while the rest of India reported marginal or no...