-The Hindustan Times In many ways, they are the nowhere people. Now a Unesco report Social Inclusion of Internal Migrants in India puts the number of internal migrants at around a third of the population. This number is far higher than the number of migrants who leave India to work abroad. Yet, since most internal migrants move back and forth according to where they can find work, they get left out...

-The Times of India PANAJI: Six major lakes face a serious threat from pollution and rapid development, as a directive of Bombay high court at Goa to prepare a detailed plan for their protection has been relegated to the backburner. The government had constituted a task force in 2003 after the court issued a few directions to the forest department to protect Carambolim lake and take up the conservation of six other...

-The Hindu Delayed payments to poor households threaten to scuttle scheme to build toilets under Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan Churu (Rajasthan): Three years ago, Churu, a town of 1.2-lakh people in the Thar desert, was ranked India's dirtiest town by the Planning Commission. Two years ago, the overall district had over 40 per cent households with no toilet of their own. Today, the district is close to its goal of becoming open defecation-free,...

-The Indian Express There is nothing on record to prove that the Muzaffarnagar riots were sparked off by a Hindu girl being molested by a Muslim boy, or a romantic relationship between two such individuals, but there is little doubt that the rhetoric of protecting "our women", our bahu-beti, from Muslim young men, fanned the swirling flames of violence. The bogey of "love jihad", which the imagination of the Hindu right...

-Outlook     India lacks the political will to put an end to manual scavenging   When Meena decided to go to school, her mother identified one quite far from her home. Sharda was a manual scavenger and knew that her occupation could spell trouble for her daughter. Meena went to a government school and struggled to reach class VIII. But her ambition was cut short when teachers and the principal at the school...