-The Hindu Demands for a universal pension scheme got bolstered with a large number of underprivileged people including farmers, domestic workers, single women, disabled persons, sex workers and trans-genders from more than 20 States beginning a five-day dharna at Jantar Mantar here on Monday. The campaign for universalisation of Rs.2,000 as monthly pension for every elderly above 60 years in age and does not come under the tax slab is being spearheaded...

-The Hindu The e-waste (Management & Handling) Rules, 2011 will come into effect from Tuesday. The rules were notified in May 2011 and aim at reduction in the use of hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment by specifying threshold for use of hazardous material including lead, mercury and cadmium. These rules were notified in advance to give the various stakeholders adequate time to prepare themselves and also to put in place...

At Old Seelampur, an impoverished neighbourhood in Northeast Delhi, rows of hollowed-out computer monitors line a dingy lane. On another street here, room after room on either side is piled high with dusty keyboards and metallic innards of computers and other electronic goods. Welcome to the wasteland of India’s urban refuse. Here, heaps of electronic waste — or e-waste as it is more commonly referred to — wait to be dismantled...

The Planning Commission drew flak when it calculated that if an urban person spent 28 per head every day and someone in rural areas spent 22, that was enough to consider them to be above the poverty line. These figures are based on consumption expenditure data collected in the 66th round of NSSO for 2009-10. From these new estimates, using the Tendulkar Committee methodology, the number of poor in 2009-10 was...

-The Business Standard E-waste disposal cannot ignore the informal sector The deadline for the enforcement of new electronic waste (e-waste) management norms is just a month or so away. And yet, most of the sector’s stakeholders seem quite unprepared. The E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011, notified almost a year ago as coming into effect from May 1 this year, require producers of electronic and white goods to take back their products...