Young rag-pickers sifting through rubbish are a common image of India’s chronic poverty, but destitute children face new hazards picking apart old computers as part of the growing “e-Waste” industry. Asif, aged seven, spends his days dismantling electronic equipment in a tiny, dimly-lit unit in east Delhi along with six other boys. “My work is to pick out these small black boxes,” he said, fingers deftly prising out integrated circuits from the...

Seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have plunged into a government effort to clean the Ganga, promising to recommend a slew of river management and technology strategies to improve its ecological health. The 2500km Ganga is one of the country’s most polluted rivers laced with sewage and city Waste although the government has spent about Rs 900 crore over the past two decades on a clean-up plan initiated in the late-1980s. An...

Indicating a new-found determination to stay the course on politically sensitive reform measures, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh not only defended the recent decontrol of petrol prices but also said diesel rates would also be freed of government control. In comments while returning from the G20 summit in Toronto, the PM seemed to be in an assertive mood despite the Opposition calling a bandh to protest fuel price hikes. "The fact...

India has been lauded for its remarkable overall economic growth of over 8% over the last five years. But despite this high and relatively stable growth, India's underbelly is soft. The agriculture sector is performing below expectations, with growth rate of around 2.8%, it is way below the Eleventh Plan target of 4%. The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimates that 22% of India's population is undernourished. Child malnutrition is...

Chanchala Devi always wanted a house. Not a mud-and-stick hut, like her current home in this desolate village in the mineral-rich, corruption-corroded state of Jharkhand, but a proper brick-and-mortar house. When she heard that a government program for the poor would give her about $700 to build that house, she applied immediately. As an impoverished day labourer from a downtrodden caste, she was an ideal candidate for the grant. Yet she...