-Down to Earth Several initiatives are demonstrating how the informal e-waste recycling sector can be formalised Savita Devi (name changed), a municipal solid waste worker in Ahmedabad city, used to earn Rs 1,500 per month. When she joined an initiative of GIZ India in 2012, where she was trained to collect e-waste, her income rose to Rs 2,500 per month. “We are now able to hire private tutors to educate our children,”...

-The Indian Express We have turned our back to the intense food and drinking water distress across states India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities. Back in the late-1980s, many states across India were reeling under back-to-back droughts for three consecutive years, not...

-The Times of India It's 8:00 am on a Sunday and outside Denzong Cinema in Gangtok's Lal Bazar, the otherwise languid atmosphere is punctured by grocers of two kinds. On one side of the cinema are those who sell vegetables, fruits and spices sourced from outside Sikkim, mostly from Siliguri, 115 km south in West Bengal. On the other side of the cinema, almost completing a triangle, are farmers from the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Modi government is planning to convene a meeting of all Muslim stakeholders, including the personal law board, to discuss the plight of women in matters of marriage, divorce and alimony. The move is certain to stir a controversy as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board has already alleged that the Centre is trying to impose a uniform civil code in the country. Such a code will...

-The Hindu Nauroti Devi, who never went to a school, uses a computer for village administration. VISAKHAPATNAM: Nauroti would hardly draw any attention from a passerby except maybe her traditional pallu over the head might draw a curious stare in South India. A Dalit who never went to school, after being elected sarpanch of Harmada village in Kishangarh Tehsil in Ajmer district of Rajasthan, she trained the government employee panchayat secretary on how...