The figures of toilets made and to be made and the population that would be affected thus are indeed mind-boggling. Since its launch three years ago, Swachh Bharat Mission has already led to the building of 467.94 lakh toilets and made 230 million people who were defecating in the open use toilets. This means that now 67 percent Indians are using toilets as against 39 percent three years ago. Three years of the mission mode campaign have helped reduce India’s burden of open defecation by 28 percent. By all counts, SBM is the one of the most talked about and dynamic schemes of the Modi government.

 

 

The IPS officer who exposed Tamil Nadu politician VK Sasikala’s special privileges in Karnataka’s Parappana Agrahara central prison, D Roopa Moudgil, is now taking care of traffic wing in Karnataka police. The brave cop was transferred from the post of DIG prison soon after she blew the whistle. However, this is not the first time the officer faced transfer for doing her job. This officer who took on various powerful politicians has been transferred 28 times in 17 years. Roopa, from Davanagare, is a 2000 batch officer who cleared her UPSC examination with an All India Rank 43. With that, she became the first Kannadiga woman to get her home cadre.

 

Triple talaq is nowhere mentioned in any interpretation. People from the board have openly said that Quran is not the only source of sharia and this has been widely reported in bold letters in various newspapers. In fact, this has been said by none other than famous cleric Arshad Madni. Had it been said by somebody else on a different occasion, there would have been hue and cry from the same people. I am truly shocked but let me tell you that the only source of sharia is the Holy Quran. Prophet Mohammad has himself said that anything attributed to him must be checked with the Quran. So, religion is a matter of belief and it should not be turned into a profession, says Arif Mohammad Khan, former cabinet minister.

Read interview: “The talaq verdict is just a beginning…” and From Shah Bano to Shayara Bano: How Rajiv’s blunder undid secularism

 

 

A forgotten war tucked away in the southern-most part of west Asia has begot one of the worst humanitarian disasters the world has seen. An international aid agencies’ report says that Yemen saw more bombings in the first half of 2017 than it has seen in all of last year. Of the 27 million Yemenis, three quarters have come to depend on some form of humanitarian assistance. Seven million Yemenis are considered severely food insecure. More than 2,000 people are believed to have already died as a result of a cholera outbreak – the largest in the world – and 5,40,000 others have been infected. Oxfam estimates that cholera is killing about one person every hour in Yemen. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has called this outbreak “unprecedented” in scale. 

 

 

Privacy is now a fundamental right! But are you baffled by the supreme court’s ruling on Right to Privacy? Centre for Internet and Society’s executive director Sunil Abraham decodes the judgment for us.