-The Indian Express Out of all those engaged in manually removing human excreta, 95 per cent are women. While men are paid in cash, women are mostly paid in kind. Meerut And New Delhi: “I started my work as a manual scavenger after my marriage,” says Premi, as she dabs her tears with her faded yellow cotton dupatta. She’s known as ‘Budhiya’ (an old woman) in the Radhna Inayatpur village in Mawana...

-Frontline.in The Aadhaar project’s headlong push towards “total” enrolment of Indian citizens threatens the privacy of individuals on an unprecedented scale, while its patchy biometric system acts as a tool of denial for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the UID chugs along, regardless, fuelled by the avarice of private interests who seek to cash in on citizen data. IN the last seven years, the right to privacy of Indian citizens has been...

-Frontline.in Magsaysay Award winning activist and national president of the Safai Karmachari Andolan Bezwada Wilson is a co-petitioner with Major General (Retd) S.G. Vombatkere in a Supreme Court case relating to the Aadhaar project. He raises an important concern about the impact of Aadhaar on people born into oppressed castes, particularly safai karmacharis, or manual scavengers. Excerpts from an interview he gave Frontline: * What is your opinion on Aadhaar? There is no...

-The Indian Express Supreme Court must urgently hear and settle issues of privacy and exclusion raised in the context of the UID project Coercion, illegality, contempt of court and exclusion have become characteristics by which people recognise the UID project. It started with its use in PDS and LPG, but, by now, has spread like a contagion to all manner of databases. In just the last 20 days, the government has...

-The Hindu Pit emptying must become central to India’s efforts to eliminate open defecation Both Ambedkar and Gandhi protested the practice of untouchability by encouraging upper castes to deal with their own waste. Last weekend, the Secretary of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Parameswaran Iyer, took up their call for action by emptying the decomposed waste from a twin-pit latrine in Warangal district, Telangana. Mr. Iyer deserves praise for calling...