-PTI NEW DELHI: The National Green Tribunal on Friday asked the government to "tell one place" where the Ganga is clean and said that despite spending huge sums, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Expressing open displeasure over the government's lackadaisical approach towards ensuring cleanliness and uninterrupted flow of the river, it said "we take it that almost nothing has happened in reality." The green panel, which was asked to act...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: Swachh Bharat as a slogan sounds smart, but rampant corruption at the grassroots level is coming in the way of implementing development projects such as constructing toilets in the state. Public sector units executing toilet projects under the Swachh Bharat Swachha Vidayalay Abhiyan are being forced to deal with villagers and sarpanches who want money before the first brick is laid. Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) is one of...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: America has for long sought to shift the greater onus of battling climate change on the developing world. But a new study seeks to remind the richest nation on the planet to first practice what it preaches. Indian think tank, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), has tried to bring the focus back on the consumption-fuelled lifestyle of the developed world, specifically the US, in...

-The Indian Express The recently-released India Rural Development Report, which is endorsed by the government, says 7% of the rural population is ‘very poor’; villages in eastern Indian states are the worst affected. A world bank report released this week has proposed a new way to measure poverty, which suggests that India may have been overestimating the number of its poor. According to a separate set of figures and analysis endorsed by...

-The Hindu The production of waste in India is growing at an exponential rate. However, the welfare and dignity of the informal workers involved in the stigmatised sector of waste management remains at the bottom of any government’s political agenda. Human society has always produced waste and always will. Waste materials — substances without value — are constantly generated in all production, all distribution and all consumption processes. The time waste spends...