Blog

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..

Is Some Vaccine Worse than None?: The Rubella Vaccine Threshold Effect   The issue:Vaccines are the most effective tools to defend against viral infection. Diseases that use to be common causes of illnesses and deaths around the world, such as...Read More..

Just two days ago, award winning journalist Sreenivasan Jain and Manas Roshan of NDTV did a story on the Swachh Bharat Mission as part of their investigative show, Truth Versus Hype.  You can watch the show here. The show was...Read More..

Check out the sanitation and culture paper at the IGC website, and a blog authored by Sangita as a bonus....Read More..

In reciprocation for my visit to India last year, Dean came to France at the end of March to visit the Aix-Marseille School of Economics. A great time was had by all, in particular the participants of Dean's seminar on...Read More..

(Part of the Bus Rapid Transit Corridor in Sheikh Sarai in Delhi.  Photo: RV Moorthy) If you haven't already seen it, do check out Aashish and Karthik's wonder op-ed on public transit in today's Hindu.  It talks about how lack...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..

Diane got bit by a dog a little the other day.  She's really quite fine, it was nothing.  There is every reason to believe this dog doesn't have rabies, but we decided to get Diane the post-exposure prophylaxis (she already...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..

I'm often asked why I work in India rather than other places.  When I answer that it is substantially because there are so many people here, people sometimes react as though that is bafflingly irrelevant. I'm thinking of this today...Read More..

Dean posted yesterday about Diane's new paper in the PNAS, which showed that maternal nutrition in India was much worse than previously thought. As the abstract of the paper says, 42.2% of Indian women are underweight when they begin pregnancy...Read More..

Diane Coffey's new article "Prepregnancy body mass and weight gain during pregnancy in India and sub-Saharan Africa" was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.   Diane's article is important because it shows that maternal nutrition in India...Read More..

A recent ad on Mid-day meal Scheme in India, made by UNICEF and uploaded on Youtube by Ministry of Human Resource and Development, is exciting. It shows little kids sitting together and enjoying nutritious meals offered in their schools. The...Read More..

check out Diane's recent note summarizing our field research on the exceptional persistence of open defecation in rural India, online at the CLTS knowledge hub.  As she writes, uncomfortable conversations about sanitation  policy are going to be necessary if we...Read More..