-PTI Will not allow fake news and targeted voter messaging Internet major Google and social media giants Twitter and Facebook have assured the Election Commission that they will not allow their platforms to be used for anything which affects the sanctity of polls during the campaign period, Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat has said. He said this was tested during the Karnataka elections. “A small pilot was there. That was the beginning. Now...

-TheWire.in Activists have argued that the purchasing power of the Rs 200 per month pension initiated in 2007 has already come down to Rs 93. New Delhi: On Sunday, about 10,000 elderly people from across the country came together at a Pension Parishad protest organised at Jantar Mantar in the capital demand universal pension rights for the elderly, single women, persons with disabilities, and other poor and vulnerable workers of the unorganised...

-Press release by Right to Food Campaign dated 28th September, 2018 17 lakh elderly, widows and differently-abled persons in Jharkhand who qualify for social security pensions, do not receive their entitlement. One important reason is that pension coverage in Jharkhand is not universal. Even those who do receive pensions face chronic selection errors and administrative glitches. In 2016-17, 3 lakh pensioners were deleted as “fake”, though many genuine persons, whose pension...

-The Indian Express Much before the Supreme Court started hearing a clutch of petitions challenging the Constitutional validity of Aadhaar and much before the unique identity number roiled a nation over concerns of privacy, Nandurbar had made peace with the 12-digit identification number. Since the launch of the unique ID in this Maharashtra district, the 12-digit identity has been inextricably tied to people’s lives — from a mother without Aadhaar who was...

-The Hindu A Rajasthan village is free of open defecation — on paper Behnara (Bharatpur District): The narrow village street is lined with gutters, dotted with excreta flushed out from latrines inside upper caste homes. Santa Devi pulls a corner of her sari over her mouth and begins to push the morning quota of waste into her metal basin using only a makeshift shovel and broom. Once she has thrown the...