115 women will be attending seminar in Paris   Usha Chomar and Guddi Athwal would not have even dreamed of a foreign sojourn let alone speaking at an international forum in Paris on the issue of health problems that manual scavengers have had to face. Both Usha and Guddi have put their past behind them and are among the 115 manual scavengers of the Alwar District of Rajasthan who have since been rehabilitated....

Bodies taken away by sweepers, cut into pieces and disposed of in Jute Bags The bodies of widows who die in government-run shelter homes in Vrindavan are taken away by sweepers at night, cut into pieces, put into Jute Bags and disposed of as the institutions do not have any provision for a decent funeral. This, too, is done only after the inmates give money to the sweeper! This shocking fact has...

 Standing on the shimmering white beach and gazing out at the turquoise blue waters of the Arabian sea, it is hard to believe that a decade ago this international tourist destination was under siege by mounting heaps of garbage. But Kovalam, about 12 km north of Thiruvananthapuram, capital of southern Kerala state, has been declared a ‘zero waste area’ by a women’s self-help group (SHG) which is engaged in recycling waste...