On 6 February, 2023 Southern Turkey and the adjoining areas in Syria were hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake followed by several aftershocks. The tremors have flattened buildings and destroyed roads and other infrastructure. At least 35,000 casualties (UPDATE) have occurred across Turkey and Syria, with the vast majority being in the former nation. A news report cited the Turkish environment minister saying that 24,921 buildings across the region had collapsed. What...

Medianama The Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) floated a second tender in December 2022 for implementation and maintenance of a Master Data Management and de- duplication tool for a State Family Database (SFDB) project. The objective is to assign the ‘Makkal ID’— a unique identification number already allotted to the state’s seven crore residents— to different records across departments. The SFDB is projected to be the “single source of truth” of all...

- Scroll.in India prohibited manual scavenging in 1993. But it took another 20 years to expand its legal definition to include the manual cleaning of drains, sewers and septic tanks. Mumbai, with the richest municipal corporation in India, was among the worst offenders when it came to the implementation of the 2013 law. Records maintained by the Safai Karamchari Andolan, a national organisation working for the rights of sanitation workers, show 19...

-PTI/ The Hindu Justice Nagarathna dissents from majority judgment, says DeMo of high-value currency notes was ‘vitiated and unlawful’ New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday upheld the legality of the Centre’s 2016 decision to ban Rs 1,000 and Rs 500 currency notes, saying the decision-making process was neither flawed nor hasty and that it was “not relevant” whether the stated objectives were achieved or not. In a big win for the Narendra...

-Press release by NREGA Sangharsh Morcha dated December 26, 2022 * Centre withheld over Rs. 7,500 cr funds, Rs. 2,744 cr due to NREGA workers * Centre hasn’t sanctioned labour budget for 2022-23 * Loss of around Rs. 3,891-Rs. 6,046 crores of NREGA wages this FY due to stoppage of work * Average days of work for the current year dropped to meagre 23 from 63.46 days (pre-covid) and 49.96 days (post-covid) Victimisation of workers: MGNREGA...