NGOs hail change in India's stand on listing Long-term exposure to asbestos can harm health: studies Canada is stalling the listing of chrysotile asbestos (white asbestos) at the Conference of Parties to the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent, meeting in Geneva. On Wednesday, India changed its stand and supported the listing. Listing will mandate the exporting countries to give prior data on the mineral to the importing nations to enable them to...
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Manual scavenger turns to fulfil her Ph.D dream
-PTI Twenty-two-year-old Dolly now dreams of doing her Ph.D and leaving behind bitter memories of her childhood when she was forced to sit on a separate bench after her teachers found that she was a manual scavenger. Along with 200 women who used to work as manual scavenger, performing the symbolic religious ablution in the holy Ganga, Dolly entered the Kashi Vishwanath temple here as part of Sulabh International's endeavour to...
More »Orissa's Koraput district has highest child vulnerability index
Nearly 100 districts across the country listed as child-vulnerable areas Nearly 100 districts across the country have been listed as child-vulnerable areas wherein children are at a high risk of losing parental care and getting exposed to difficult circumstances, according to a new survey conducted by SOS Children's Villages of India, a non-government organisation that helps orphaned children. Koraput district in Orissa has the highest child vulnerability index followed by Balaghat district...
More »‘At the first meeting, Shanti Bhushan said something about how we are here, writing the Constitution afresh’ by Ravish Tiwari
Team Hazare has been very critical of the responses of the government representatives in the drafting committee. They even said the Lokpal had become a Jokepal. During the discussions, we did not want to do anything that would upset the applecart. We did not go to the media, except for Kapil Sibal who held a daily briefing. The Hazare team did not want a joint briefing. We agreed. We did a...
More »The discreet charm of civil society by P Sainath
There is nothing wrong in having advisory groups. But there is a problem when groups not constituted legally cross the line of demands, advice and rights-based, democratic agitation. The 1990s saw marketing whiz kids at the largest English daily in the world steal a term then in vogue among sexually discriminated minorities: PLUs — or People Like Us. Media content would henceforth be for People Like Us. This served advertisers' needs...
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