700 million Indians have cell phones, but 638 million still don’t have access to proper sanitation. At this year’s South Asian Conference on Sanitation, social solutions to the problem were discussed, including “naming and shaming” and the CLTS programme which gets villagers to map the open areas where they defecate There can hardly be a bigger taboo than sanitation when it comes to the government, bureaucracy or even the people...

Stillbirths are largely invisible as a social and public health problem. Millions of families experience stillbirth, yet these deaths remain unenumerated, unsupported, and the solutions undercooked. Calling upon the international community and individual countries for action, British medical journal The Lancet has said better counting of stillbirths alongside maternal and neonatal deaths and strategic programmatic action would bring stillbirths under account. The Lancet's series on stillbirths suggests that millions of such cases...

The draft bill seeks to create an institution that will be independent of those it seeks to police, and will have powers to investigate and prosecute all public servants, and others found guilty of corrupting them. A number of commentators have raised issues about the provisions in the draft of the Jan Lokpal Bill. They have asked whether it would be an effective instrument to check corruption. They have pointed to...

The government on Monday told the Supreme Court that it had given its consent for a CBI probe into alleged corruption in the utilisation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) funds in Orissa. “The consent to have an investigation into the alleged misappropriation and diversion of funds for the scheme has been given by the minister concerned (Ministry of Rural Development),” Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising told a bench headed...

As the World Bank and International Monetary Fund convene for their annual Spring Meetings here, soaring food prices are high on the agenda, prompting some analysts to fast-forward to 2050 and the question of how to nourish the mid-century's estimated world population of 8.9 billion people – the majority of whom will live in developing countries. "More poor people are suffering and more people could become poor because of high and...