-PTI The Planning Commission today clarified that Rs 35 lakh wasn’t spent on two of its toilets but an entire block of lavatories under “routine maintenance” and said it was “unfortunate” to call it wasteful expenditure. “While the amount of Rs 35 lakh being mentioned (in an RTI reply) is correct, an impression is being created that this has been spent on two toilets. This is totally false because these toilet blocks...

A survey of 71 cities across the country conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has shown that officially 82 per cent of all the water that municipalities of these cities supply comes from surface water resources, and the rest comes from groundwater resources. But of these 71 cities, 11 depend almost completely on groundwater for public water supply. In the remaining, agencies supply water from surface sources by...

-The Hindu If only laws could eliminate all that they prohibit, India would have been free of the scourge of manual scavenging decades ago. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Bill, which is to be introduced in the monsoon session of Parliament, is another attempt to prevent employment of people in the cleaning, handling or carrying of human excreta. Despite the renewed stress on rehabilitation in the...

-The Indian Express Warning that time was running out to preserve the Ganga, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today pulled up state governments for a tardy performance on sewage treatment and asked them to take action against industries polluting the river. Voicing concern over the discharge of 2,900 million litres of sewage in the Ganga every day, Singh asked state governments to send proposals for new sewage treatment plants and said adequate funding...

Each time 25 year old Salma takes her one year old son Zubair to the Batla Clinic (a private clinic in Delhi) for a shot of the DPT, the cost of transportation and the vaccine adds up to approximately Rs.500.   When it is time for Zubair to take the next immunization dose, Salma may find that the expenses have entirely spiraled out of her reach. New vaccines and expensive brands of baby...