-The Times of India MUMBAI: Mumbaikars can now drink water straight from the tap, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation’s (BMC’s) hydraulic engineer Ashok Tawadia said. According to BMC, an average 0.7% of water samples collected daily across Mumbai between April 2018 and March 2019 tested positive for Coliform bacteria, a group of microorganisms present in water bodies that indicate water may not be fit for drinking. This is far better than the WHO...

-The Indian Express Of the 40 lakh-odd people excluded from the final NRC draft, around 36 lakh have filed ‘claims’, while ‘objections’ have been received against a little over 2 lakh people among the 2.89 crore included in the final draft. Guwahati: Rakibul Hassan Khan (35) and his mother Hasina Khatun (65) went to a National Register of Citizens (NRC) hearing centre in Senga area of Barpeta district on Monday in...

-The Indian Express BJP is attempting to use Citizenship issue to woo Namasudra community in Bengal. It is generally believed that unlike other states of India, caste and religion don’t play a significant role in West Bengal’s electoral politics. Academic literature often articulates this as West Bengal’s “exceptionalism”. As a result of the electoral decline of the Left Front and some limited attempts by the Trinamool Congress at community-based mobilisation, the...

-Newslaundry.com The election season seems to have skipped adivasis in the state that has recorded 19 deaths from starvation since 2017. On New Year’s Eve, Baghiya Birijiya lost her mother Budhni Birijiyan to hunger, cold, and extreme poverty in Latehar, one of India’s poorest districts. The family had so few means that they could not cremate the 80-year-old’s body for two days, until public pressure led the administration to intervene to provide...

-Economic and Political Weekly The onslaught on the rights of women, both as economic agents and as Citizens, is based on the interlocking of macroeconomic policies with prevailing patriarchal structures, the foundations of which need to be unravelled, visibilised, and visualised with the primary purpose of combatting the ongoing process of gendered de-equalisation. It is in this context that the concept of “feminist finance” is articulated, especially in relation to the...