The Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011 notified by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, should be viewed by State governments and municipal authorities as a good blueprint for a much-needed civic clean-up. The Central Pollution Control Board estimates the consumption of plastic products in India to be of the order of eight million tonnes a year. This ranges from shopping bags to household and industrial material. The volume...

Few will take very seriously the undertaking given by the government in the Supreme Court that River Ganga will be pure and free of pollution by 2020. Similar commitments were made to the public 25 years ago when, in 1985, the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) to clean this most treasured of the sub-continent’s rivers was launched. Even after spending several thousand crores of rupees on the project, the Ganga is...

Women have rarely held posts of political authority in Kerala. There are, though, processes at play that could alter some things, a sense that big changes are under way. They will account for over 50 per cent of all 21, 682 wards in the 1,209 local bodies going to the polls. A single issue dogs all candidates in the local polls in Guruvayoor municipality of Kerala's Thrissur district. Any of the...

The youth will not take no for an answer. Five years on, the RTI comes of age. At four feet something, Santosh’s energy belies her petite frame. The school dropout was introduced to RTI through activist Arvind Kejriwal, and now, at Parivartan’s Sundar Nagri office, she holds fort, helping others acquire everything from BPL and ration cards to school admissions through RTI. Threats and attacks by local authorities who dubbed her...

KEY TRENDS   • Section 105 of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013, which provides for excluding 13 Central legislation, including Land Acquisition (Mines) Act 1885, Atomic Energy Act, 1962, Railway Act 1989, National Highways Act 1956 and Metro Railways (Construction of Works) Act, 1978, from its purview, has been amended for payment of compensation with rigours $ • The amendments have now...