-The Indian Express Despite the obvious effect this will have on the environment, the GST affects livelihoods and families of the waste pickers — most of whom are migrants. With the resale value on glass bottles becoming minuscule after the 18 per cent tax on glass products as per GST, waste collectors, who help recycle glass, paper and plastic, and have traditionally been a key link in the city’s inadequate waste management...

-The Hindu Kodenchery Station police are scripting stories of compassion Kozhikode: Two underprivileged persons from the Kodenchery station limits will soon have their own house, thanks to the compassion of a group of police officers from the station. Work is on in full swing to complete construction of the houses. “Malar, a rubber tapper from Tamil Nadu, has been living at Theyyappara under a plastic-thatched roof. The house we completed with the support...

-Scroll.in Suranga is a horizontal tunnel-like well excavated in a hillside. Even as Kerala reels under severe drought, Gangadhar Rao never misses a day to irrigate thousands of areca nut trees, coconut trees and pepper plants on his 30 acres of farmland. Rao is a farmer from Bedadka Panchayath in Kerala’s northernmost district of Kasaragod and depends on Suranga for all his water needs — irrigation and domestic — round the year. Suranga is...

-The Hindu Surakhpur, declared ‘fully digital payment enabled’ by government, rues low literacy, poor connectivity Around 10 days ago, a team of Delhi government officials handed over two PoS (point of sale) machines to kirana (grocery) store owners Surat Singh and Ramesh Kumar, both residents of Surakhpur village in Najafgarh, on the Delhi-Haryana border. The officials taught the two how to use the machines. On Wednesday, when The Hindu visited the village, where...

-The Times of India BENGALURU/ NEW DELHI: Through Sunday, the media was buzzing with reports that petrol pumps would refuse to accept card payments for fuel from Monday. Anxious consumers, already grappling with a cash shortage, fretted that this would directly clash with the government's efforts to wean people off cash and encourage digital payments. Finally, there was some relief on Sunday night after banks agreed to defer their decision to charge...