-The Hindu Everybody has a favourite villain to blame, yet the herd of restive elephants in the room is led by a particularly malevolent matriarch — corruption The floods have abated in Bengaluru. As individuals struggle to clean their houses, the silt on the roads left behind by the receding water — now a fine dust that flies in the air choking us — is a reminder of those difficult times. Various analyses...

-TheWire.in The city needs granular administrative and planning responses to help identify the poor who are forced to live in flood prone areas out of sheer necessity. They cannot be evicted and thrown to the streets. When I was a kid, I remember my home in Bengaluru flooding repeatedly, especially during the monsoons.  This was strange as we were in Chamarajpet, a well-planned neighbourhood developed by the visionary Dewan Sheshadri Iyer, along with...

-Outlook India Experts say flooding in urban and peri-urban areas are happening due to unplanned waste dumping and continuous disregard for natural recharge structures like ponds, wetlands, and Tanks. The Safdarjung Observatory, one of Delhi's primary weather stations, recorded 189.6 mm of rainfall between June 1 and July 22, which is less than normal (201 mm). But it didn’t change the picture. Every time it rains, water-logging and subsequent traffic snarl for...

-TheWire.in * India has reduced open defecation and made some progress to improve sanitation services. But its sanitation system is not yet sustainable and not yet safe. * In Tapoban Basti in Bhubaneswar, some men avoid using the toilet every day to not have to incur the cost of cleaning out the septic tank. * In a basti on the outskirts of Jaipur, a community toilet slowly ran out of water and the...

-The Hindu Post-COVID learning for children should be accelerated, says World Bank’s Global Director for Education Jaime Saavedra. World Bank’s Global Director for Education Jaime Saavedra was in India last week to meet Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and governments of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh to discuss concerns over learning losses for children due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for concerted efforts to bridge these gaps. In a sit-down interview...