Religious folks to say God is everywhere, which they mostly seem to believe is a good thing. Only half of that is true of excrement here in India.

So why has a self-evident statement by the rural development minister that India needs toilets more than it does temples raised the hackles of some religious groups here?  No reason, I suspect, except the political party he represents.

India's Muslim minority faces economic and social discrimination--resulting in skewed poverty figures for the community. But their treatment at the hands of government authorities can be even worse, new reports suggest.

A new study by the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association (JTSA) documents 16 cases in which the so-called "special cell" of the Delhi police allegedly planted evidence in an effort to nab Muslim youths as operatives of terrorist groups like Al Badr, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT), Outlook magazine reports. All 16 were later acquitted by the courts. 

But not everybody is so lucky, presumably. Even those who avoid conviction, thanks to support from human rights activists and the like, may never escape the cloud of suspicion that surrounds them after the initial arrest. And there has so far been no attempt to compensate the victims of this type of abuse by the police, or to lay criminal charges against the police officers involved, the JTSA points out.

“Courts have clearly indicted the special cell for setting up innocents, violating due process, concocting evidence... (they have) ordered a CBI probe against the cell and directed the filing of FIRs and initiation of departmental inquiries," Outlook quotes JTSA president Manisha Sethi as saying. Yet, not a single officer in the operations described here has suffered any consequence. Instead, they get promotions and gallantry awards.”

Across India, the situation is equally bad, journalist Muzamil Jaleel points out in a compelling series of articles for the Indian Express on the prosecutions of alleged operatives of the banned Students' Islamic Movement of Indian (SIMI). 

In India's losing battle against the abortion of female fetuses, the state of Orissa plans to turn expecting mothers into undercover cops.

The Orissa government has decided to use pregnant women in sting operations to catch clinics and nursing homes that are conducting illegal sex determination tests, as well as abortions for sex selection, the Hindustan Times reports.

Apparently, no one among the state authorities attended elementary school, or they'd know about the basketball under the t-shirt trick.

As Hanna Ingber Win reported for GlobalPost in 2011, as India develops and its middle class grows, the aborting of female fetuses is becoming more common. India’s 2011 census showed that the country’s child sex ratio, the number of girls to boys under age 7, is the worst it has been since India gained independence in 1947.

A natural sex ratio is 105 boys born for every 100 girls. This is to adjust for girls’ slightly higher likelihood of surviving than boys. However, India’s 2011 census showed that the sex ratio for children under age seven is 109 to 100. While not ostensibly a large difference, that ratio equates to 7 million fewer girls than boys under the age of 7 in India, which is home to 1.2 billion people.

Things are particularly bad in Orissa.

The sex ratio in Orissa has declined from 953 females per 1,000 males in 2001 to 934 in 2011. In more than 10 of the state’s 30 districts, the sex ratio is less than 900, the paper said.

Will the stings work? Doubtful. Well, they'll make a few busts. But the problem goes beyond law enforcement. 

Are you good enough to play pro football in India? Probably. Would you want to? Probably not.

That's what I came away with from this Time magazine profile on the opening weekend of the new Elite Football League of India, which also features teams representing Pakistan and Sri Lanka.