-The Hindu The production of waste in India is growing at an exponential rate. However, the welfare and dignity of the informal workers involved in the stigmatised sector of waste management remains at the bottom of any government’s political agenda. Human society has always produced waste and always will. Waste materials — substances without value — are constantly generated in all production, all distribution and all consumption processes. The time waste spends...

-The Hindu The PMJDY celebrates success on its website, but thousands of Marys remain outside the banking system. This won’t change unless the scheme alters both design and implementation A few months ago, when the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) was still being spoken of as a success for the largest number of accounts opened in a day, earning the government a Guinness world record, I visited the branch of a...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government's announcement that it would maintain a publicly available database of sex offenders is being portrayed as a significant step in addressing the threat posed by criminals whose crimes largely go unreported and hence encourage them to repeat the offence. It also addresses the general perception that such criminals tend to repeat their act and hence need to be monitored. A look at laws in other...

-The New Indian Express The problem of farmer suicides has assumed a serious proporition. The toll is increasing year after year. According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), as many as 5,650 farmers committed suicide in India last year. This works out to one farmer suicide in every 100 villages or one farmer suicide in every block in the country last year. State-wise, Maharashtra accounted for the highest number of...

-Hindustan Times Shimla: Even as union agriculture minister Radha Mohan Singh has blamed love affairs and then impotency for farmer suicides, figures recorded by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) completely contradict him. According to the NCRB report, released recently, 87.5% of farmer suicides in Himachal Pradesh were due to crop failure in 2014 and the state also tops the northern region in absolute number of suicides by farmers with 32 such...