-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 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...

-The Hindu Jaipur: It is the Chandpole cremation ground in the heart of Jaipur city. Groups of people have come to perform the last rites of their loved ones. The mood is sombre. But the exercise, one will observe, is rather mechanical. Each family seems to know under which shed they have to perform the last rites. If they don't, they are directed to the right one by the workers at the...

-The Indian Express A government shorn of Western educated ministers could change the status quo. Since 1947, Indians have not spoken out so strongly and clearly for a completely new brand of people running government. Mercifully, there are no ministers educated abroad. Thankfully, none of them has been brainwashed at Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge, the World Bank or the IMF, subtly forcing expensive Western solutions on typically Indian problems at the cost of...