-The Hindu Kolkata (West Bengal): Of the 341 blocks in the State, 81 blocks have water with more arsenic than the permissible limit and 49 blocks with more fluoride than the standard value. North 24 Parganas district, where about 20 blocks are affected with arsenic contamination, is the worst affected and is followed by Nadia, where 17 blocks and Murshidabad with 14 blocks where arsenic in groundwater is higher than the limit. Certain...
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A sound economy needs a sound environment -Bittu Sahgal
-The Hindustan Times Going by our Intelligence Bureau (IB) and some of the voices in the government, anyone asking for the protection of the country's forests, its rivers or its coasts is anti-national and destroying the country's economy. I have spent the better part of my life working to save India's natural wealth from the assault of development (largely in vain it often seems). I told successive governments that the hundreds of...
More »Aadhaar and the rhetoric of fear -Praveen Chakravarty
-The Indian Express Five years on, we need to examine our xenophobic reactions and paranoia of the intrusive state. Five years and Rs 4,000 crore ($800mn) later, there is a pregnant pause. "Are you who you claim you are?" is a question that more than 60 crore Indian residents can now answer with integrity. Twenty-three out of the 36 states and Union territories of India can now verify the authenticity of more...
More »Will access to toilets guarantee women's security in rural India? -Jitendra
-Down to Earth The Badaun rape incident shows how vulnerable women are to sexual violence when there are no toilets in homes The shocking incident of gang rape and murder of two minor girls in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun district has drawn horrified reactions from leaders across the world. While most of the media attention has been on the apathy and insensitivity shown by the Akhilesh Yadav government and the police force, what...
More »Hidden in India's Toilet Statistics, the Real Threat of Sexual Violence-Ketki Angre and Sonal Mehrotra
-NDTV Badaun (Uttar Pradesh): On the night of May 28, two girls, cousins aged 14 and 15 years, stepped out of their house in Katra village, in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun district, to relieve themselves. They were allegedly abducted and raped by some men from the same village; their bodies were found hanging from a tree the next day. The route the young girls took that night is a familiar one...
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