-The Hindu   With the world's most toxic air, Delhi struggles to breathe. Although its challenges are many, going forward, the city must learn a few basic lessons from the past The summer of 1857 is well-etched in the Indian psyche as the summer of revolt, of a mutiny against the British. Earlier that year, however, there was a smaller initiative that bears recollection - for it speaks of an unfinished agenda of...

Quite opposite to the top-down model of budgeting, the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party-led Government in Delhi has decided to go for a 'citizen-centric' budget planning at 'mohalla'-level for the fiscal year 2015-16. Drawing lessons from the success stories of participatory budgeting conducted at municipal-level in cities like Porto Alegre (Brazil), the AAP-led Delhi Government has decided to launch this form of decentralized budgeting on a pilot basis in a...

-The Hindu The programme needs to retain the momentum of a movement than that of a litter-cleaning project "Slum districts... consisted of poorly built houses, a deficiency of ventilation and toilets, unpaved narrow streets, mud, and stomach-turning stenches due to the presence of decaying refuse and sewerage. In such conditions, ill health was observably endemic." This is not a description of Indian cities today (though it may well be), but of Britain around...

-Business Standard The government to set up a 'Swachh Bharat Kosh' to provide tax and fiscal incentives The Centre would spend around Rs 2,00,000 crore over the next five years for the Swachh Bharat Mission, said M Venkaiah Naidu, Union minister for urban development. The minister also said the government would set up a 'Swachh Bharat Kosh' to provide tax and fiscal incentives. The minister said urban India generates about 68.8 million tonnes...

-The Hindu RAJAHMUNDRY (Andhra Pradesh): As the government is busy in holding meetings on how to conduct Godavari Pushkarams, findings by two separate NGOs from Chennai and Hyderabad have exposed dangers of unhygienic conditions, unclean surroundings and toxicants spread through excess usage of plastic along the Godavari bunds and its adjourning towns and villages. Centre for Environment Studies in Southern India (CESSI), Chennai and Organization against River Water Pollution (ORWP), Hyderabad have...