-The Hindu There are 119 Laws that discriminate against persons affected by leprosy: plea The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the Centre and all States to remove references to leprosy as a disability from statute books, saying leprosy is curable and patients should not be victims of social stigma. Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, heading a three-judge Bench, said references to leprosy as a disability in the written Laws amounted to “statutory...

-Down to Earth Waste pickers recycle almost 20 per cent of India's wastes. Yet they are unrecognised, face discrimination and are not entitled to government schemes India produces about 5.31 million tonnes of waste each year and is facing an unprecedented solid waste management crisis. Coupled with an upward trend in industrialisation, rural migration, spending and an increasing propensity for capitalist consumption, the amount of waste generated in India will continue...

-Scroll.in It is important that forest policies are formulated through a gender-sensitive lens and that women are included in the conversation. A few weeks ago, when Google India marked the 45th anniversary of the Chipko movement with a doodle, it was a refreshing flashback to forest communities sacrificing their lives to protect trees from being felled for timber use. One of the first such recorded community protests was at Khejarli village in...

-The Hindu The focus must be on enhancing rape conviction rates and taking steps to rehabilitate and empower survivors Amid belligerent demands for capital punishment for rapists, on Sunday the President signed an ordinance that introduces the death penalty for those convicted of raping girls below the age of 12. But this clamour for introducing the most stringent punishment has conveniently sidestepped the more cogent criticism of the systemic failures in addressing...

-The Indian Express The poor conviction rate in cases of child rape goes to show that death penalty - which comes at the sentencing stage, post-convictions — will mean little to a vast majority of the victims. Two telling sets of figures from the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) put a question mark on the effectiveness of death as a deterrence for child rape. In 2016, of the 64,138 child rape...