-Tehelka.com Cleanliness of Indian cities cannot be ensured without job security, safety gear and competitive wages for sanitary workers. In a unique address to the nation on 2 October - Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary - Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his commitment to devote 100 hours every year to sweeping the floor, picking up the waste and dusting his windows. He also urged everybody to do the same so that Indian cities...

-The Business Standard The response by Indian industry and civil society to Satyarthi's honour has been conspicuously absent When an Indian citizen had last won a Nobel Prize - Amartya Sen for Economics in 1998 - the prize was much celebrated in the country, and the winner was awarded a Bharat Ratna the next year. But that was 16 years ago. Today, even as another Indian, Kailash Satyarthi, is set to jointly...

-Accountability Initiative/ RaghuBytes Unless you have a blocked nose, I strongly suggest that you do not drive from Bhubaneshwar the capital of Orissa, to Kandamahal, a remote tribal district, particularly in the evenings. At twilight, when you begin to wind into the interior, you are greeted with the sight of the behinds of the entire population squatting on the roadside, faces turned away and shitting. We quickly wound up the windows...

-The Hindu Traditional hierarchies are too deeply entrenched to be reversed through one single measure; they need a concerted push, backed by strong will from different segments of society, including, but not confined to, politicians The rise of Other Backward Classes (OBC) and Dalit-Adivasi leaders in the political sphere is celebrated as India's "silent revolution." At the national level, this phenomenon has been especially marked since the early 1990s, leading to comments...

-The Telegraph Jaipur: Death owes this to the living. In this desert state, it is once more the great leveller. It needed a prod from a blindfolded lady with scales, but social workers say it's a big step forward towards ending years of Caste-based discrimination that did not even spare the dead. Maybe, not much longer. Here's the story. The Jaipur Municipal Corporation (JMC) has "removed" signposts and covered boards at crematoriums that marked...