For some people, life is all about a fried hollow globe with a thumb-jabbed hole in the middle. Hot, sour, sweetened or served in dahi (curd), phuchkas are a part of growing up. Unfortunately, the men who sell the phuchkas don’t know where the next jab will come from. Their thumb, or the sudden snatch of officials. Reason: there’s no law to protect them from harassment for selling their stuff on streets. But things...
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Scavenging, NREGA kept PM, Sonia busy during 2G, Anna storms by DK Singh
What kept Prime Minister Manmohan Singh busy after securing minister A Raja’s resignation on the night of November 14 last year? He was writing a reply to National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi’s letter on the practice of manual scavenging. On November 15, he wrote to her that he was asking the Minister of Social Justice & Empowerment to “examine how to strengthen” implementation of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and...
More »No displacement, resettle slum dwellers where they live: NAC by Smita Gupta
At a time that land in urban centres, especially in the big metropolitan cities, is at a premium, a Working Group of the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) has suggested that, as far as possible, slum dwellers should be resettled at the spot where they are currently living, rather than displacing them, so that they continue to remain close to their places of work. NAC sources said the Working...
More »Centre proposes to merge rural and urban health missions by Aarti Dhar
The Centre proposes to merge the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the yet-to-be-launched National Urban Health Mission (NUHM) in the 13th Five-Year-Plan period. The two ambitious Missions will be separate entities in the upcoming 12th Five-Year-Plan period, after the launch of the urban health mission, but subsequently merged. In its proposals to the Planning Commission, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has said that the National Urban Health Mission...
More »Landless Plan a Long March by Isolda Agazzi
The Gandhian movement Ekta Parishad plans to organise a march for land rights in October 2012 in India, aiming to gather around 100,000 indigenous people, dalits and poor peasants. Support is shaping up around the world, at events such as an international mobilisation conference in Geneva Sep. 12-13. "In India, a large number of adivasi (indigenous people) are pushed out of their land because of mining, huge dams, wildlife protection, industrialisation...
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