Blog

Julie McCarthy of National Public Radio covers the recent incident of sexual and caste violence in Badaun and open defecation. She rightly highlights the importance of shifting social norms in order to eliminate open defecation, and even uses some statistics...Read More..

In his inaugural address to India's Parliament, President Pranab Mukherjee outlined the new government's agenda. Along with other things, he promised a Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission). This is exactly what he said: 15. We must not tolerate the...Read More..

Pritha Chatterjee has an amazing report in the Indian Express from the area in Uttar Pradesh where horrible violence on young girls was reported in the media recently. I do like it. We ourselves found many of these things in...Read More..

Rukmini S, who has written quite a few articles now on the importance of sanitation, reported the Squat Survey's findings in an op-ed in the Hindu. We are of course, really thankful to her, and request you to read her...Read More..

Wordpress tells us that this is our 200th post on the r.i.c.e blog. We thank you, our readers, for being with us all this while. We wrote two new articles this past week. Actually, we wrote more, but only two...Read More..

Jairam Ramesh, who in his short tenure as India's minister for Sanitation (and in his longer tenure as Rural Development Minister) did a lot to advance the cause of ending open defecation in India, has a new article about ending...Read More..

There is much that is tragic about this story: Rape Allegations in a Haryana Village Underscore a Social Fracas. The crime itself appears to have been profound; the subsequent blaming of the victims, familiar; the terrible consequences of the social...Read More..

Live Mint invokes a martial metaphor: Launching a war against malnutrition. What would such a war look like? Who would be the enemies? How would they be defeated? It is not an easy question. Wars are usually things that states...Read More..

Today, the switching study team finished its final qualitative interview! We have learned a lot about sanitation attitudes and behaviors -- from the banks of the Arabian Sea in Gujarat, to the foothills of the Himalayas in the Nepali terai....Read More..

In a new article in the business newspaper LiveMint, Sumit Mishra discusses the increasing recognition of the importance of sanitation in India. Mishra writes: The importance of sanitation can be gauged by looking at the manifestos of the two major...Read More..

Indian voters are often asked to vote for, among other things, lotuses, cycles, lanterns, elephants, watches, or hammers and sickles. Six decades ago, when a largely illiterate and unschooled country decided to embark on an experiment in political democracy, images...Read More..

A couple of my friends sent me this. Its from the city of Mumbai....Read More..

Different places in India are voting in national elections on different days. Diane and I wrote these thoughts about the election together. Today, India is preparing for an election which will shape the lives of more people than any election...Read More..

My article with Aparajita Chattopadhyay and Rajan Gupt just came out in Economic and Political Weekly -- check it out!  ...Read More..

I wanted to share Jeff Hammer's blog post on the World Bank blog about the role of development economists in policy making. More wise words from Jeff Hammer can be found on a previous blog post on the Indian health...Read More..

In fact, Sagar, Madhya Pradesh – where I have been watching the surveyors ask about toilets – is not any more horrible than the other districts where we have done the survey, but I could not resist the pun. Yesterday,...Read More..