-The Hindu   With the world's most toxic air, Delhi struggles to breathe. Although its challenges are many, going forward, the city must learn a few basic lessons from the past The summer of 1857 is well-etched in the Indian psyche as the summer of revolt, of a mutiny against the British. Earlier that year, however, there was a smaller initiative that bears recollection - for it speaks of an unfinished agenda of...

-PTI LONDON: An Indian climate change activist who works with local communities and governments for environmental change has been awarded the Commonwealth youth award. Priti Rajagopalan, 23, received a 5,000-pound grant towards her work at a ceremony held at the Commonwealth secretariat headquarters in London, the Commonwealth said on October 19. "This award inspires me to move forward and to take a lot more people with me, with the same spirit, into the...

-The Hindu Bijapur (Karnataka): Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Minister H.K. Patil has said that the State government was contemplating a policy to ensure the construction of bathrooms along with toilets in rural areas. Addressing presspersons here on Sunday, he said that to enhance the living standards of rural people, it was essential to provide these basic facilities. Claiming that bathrooms, like toilets, were also equally important for the development of the rural...

-PTI A whopping 70% of maladies in India are waterborne owing to poor water quality: study Water purifier market in India is likely to touch Rs 7,000 crore by 2015 from the current level of about Rs 3,200 crore, an Assocham study has said. Water purifier segment in India is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of about 25% and is largely driven by rising sales of low-cost variants triggered by...

What better elixir than pure water? Thanks to Naandi, a safe drinking water programme, 3,90,536 households in rural areas across four Indian states are benefited.  Naandi, headquartered in Hyderabad, is a not-for-profit organization which works with governing bodies in rural areas, including Karnataka, to provide clean drinking water to the poor. So what really is their modus operandi? It is essentially a community-run programme where the local governing body or gram...