Blog

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..

I’ll paste it below.  The concerns he raises have been at the front of our minds here at r.i.c.e. – alas, we see that “the control of infectious disease” made his list of domains in which policy-making appears disconnected from...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 did a report on Aashish's paper "Reporting and incidence of violence against women in India". Check out the article here. It says, When thinking of sexual violence, most people imagine the perpetrator a stranger lurking in the dark. In...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..

Thorsten Kiefer, founder & CEO of WASH United, has an article in Forbes, called "Why Innovative Campaigning Is Critical To Fixing Sanitation In India". There is a paragraph that I particularly like: Kevin Shane, a colleague from Indian innovation consultancyQuicksand who...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..

Op-ed in Indian Express: Can India be far behind? Written by Dean Spears on November 19th, 2014 My op-ed on emissions and coal in India was published today in the Indian express.  I’ll post it below, but first this haunting photograph that accompanied Gardiner...Read More..

I’m writing mainly to post a link to Gardiner Harris’s NYT story today: Coal rush in India could tip balance on climate change.  Getting energy from coal has truly awful health consequences — I sometimes think that if I weren’t...Read More..

A recent article in the Times of India by Dilip Abreu, Pranab Bardhan, Maitreesh Ghatak, Ashok Kotwal, Dilip Mookherjee and Debraj Ray poses a rational argument against phasing out the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Here are some of the excerpts from...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..

Nidhi Khurana wrote a nice article in the live mint about the governments Swachh Bharat Mission. She also refers to the SQUAT findings in her article. You can also read the full article here...Read More..

Sreenivasan Jain: Is Swachh Bharat repeating mistakes of the past? India’s proposed toilet revolution is all set to repeat mistakes of the past Enter Ramduari in Uttar Pradesh’s impoverished Sitapur district, and the toilets stand out in their striking white newness, one outside...Read More..

Our Associate Director, Sangita Vyas gave an illuminating presentation of the SQUAT findings and discussed the importance of behaviour change and monitoring latrine use. Other panelist at the session were Malini Mehra, founder and CEO of Centre for Social Markets,...Read More..