Blog >> Sanitation

Today is Gandhi Jayanti, which marks the first anniversary of the Swachh Bharat Mission. r.i.c.e. marked the occasion a few days ago by hosting a Conference on Purity, Untouchability, and Open Defecation: Starting a Conversation for a Swachh Bharat. At the...Read More..

If you would like to attend the conference, you must register by here by 25th Sept. Last year, the Government of India launched the Swachch Bharat Mission, aimed at eliminating open defecation by 2019. How can the widespread adoption of latrine use...Read More..

Everyone concerned about the prospects of the Swachh Bharat Mission should check out this new paper in BMC Public Health by lead author Parimita Routray and some of the top thinkers in sanitation, available at this link here: They reach many of...Read More..

India, on Sunday morning, set two new Guinness World Records –for the most individuals performing Yoga at a single venue, and individuals from the largest number of nationalities performing it simultaneously. The prime minister took everyone by surprise when after...Read More..

Yep. Its at the India Habitat Center, on  Sunday. Here is the link for the event. When the video is available on the internet, we will link it here....Read More..

Please go to livemint and see Nikhil and Aashish's op-ed on the struggles being faced by the new Swachh Bharat Mission. They compile a lot of data from the website of the Swachh Bharat Mission to present the case that the...Read More..

This week, FiveThirtyEight blog highlighted a newly-released working paper by Dean Spears and I. The paper, now posted as part of the National Bureau of Economic Research's working paper series, studies the infant mortality externalities of poor sanitation. The paper, "Neighborhood Sanitation...Read More..

Anil K. Rajvanshi, an Indian academic and the Director of an agricultural institute in Maharastra, recently wrote an article titled ‘The Un-Swachh Truth’ in the Huffington Post. The points which the author takes up in the article resonate with our...Read More..

The government's plans to monitor toilet building as a part of the Swacch Bharat Mission were highlighted this week in USA Today.  The article quotes from the SQUAT report to make the point that simply building toilets will not be...Read More..

This afternoon in Washington DC, IFPRI will release its new 2014-2015 Global Food Policy Report.  The report covers an impressive range of important topics.  Among them, is a chapter that I was honored to be asked to contribute, in collaboration...Read More..

Our Associate Director Sangita Vyas was a panelist on DelhiDemand's show on Sanitation and waste in Delhi. You can see the show here. In the show, Sangita referred to Dean's work on sanitation and health, and on Jeff Hammer's work...Read More..

Scroll.in, along with IndiaSpend,  had an article on anti-biotic resistance in India. We quote from the article: With gut bacteria, the chances of that happening may increase when you take antibiotics, because bacteria, like every species, evolve to survive. “The...Read More..

Without saying much, I'll post the full interview here.  Its available online on the Business Standard website here. -- Rural India is a dismal outlier when it comes to open defecation and that's a major reason for its stunted, unhealthy...Read More..

For those of you haven’t been paying attention to the uproar in India over whether school kids get Christmas off this year, we have one more thing to rejoice today: India’s “commitment towards providing transparent, effective and accountable governance to...Read More..

I’ve been worrying — to anyone who will put up with listening — that the attention generated by the Swatch Bharat Abhiyan will be diverted from lifesaving efforts to end rural open defecation, towards cleaning up litter in the markets of the...Read More..

I’m writing from the opening minutes of a large Unicef conference called Stop Stunting at the Taj Palace hotel in Delhi.  On my way into the hotel, I had with me an empty soda can to throw away.  The lobby...Read More..