-Down to Earth Waste pickers recycle almost 20 per cent of India's wastes. Yet they are unrecognised, face discrimination and are not entitled to government schemes India produces about 5.31 million tonnes of waste each year and is facing an unprecedented solid waste management crisis. Coupled with an upward trend in industrialisation, rural migRATion, spending and an increasing propensity for capitalist consumption, the amount of waste geneRATed in India will continue...

-The Indian Express Death penalty for sexual offences against children is misconceived. Ordinance is doomed to fail Reactionary law reform has always been an easy way for governments to appear tough on crime, and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Ordinance, 2018 is no different. It betrays a lack of thought on the likely impact, and only serves to endanger the lives of future victims. The five state reports of the Centre for Child and...

-The Hindu The focus must be on enhancing rape conviction RATes and taking steps to rehabilitate and empower survivors Amid belligerent demands for capital punishment for rapists, on Sunday the President signed an ordinance that introduces the death penalty for those convicted of raping girls below the age of 12. But this clamour for introducing the most stringent punishment has conveniently sidestepped the more cogent criticism of the systemic failures in addressing...

-The Indian Express The poor conviction RATe in cases of child rape goes to show that death penalty - which comes at the sentencing stage, post-convictions — will mean little to a vast majority of the victims. Two telling sets of figures from the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) put a question mark on the effectiveness of death as a deterrence for child rape. In 2016, of the 64,138 child rape...

-PTI Petrol price today hit ?74.40 a litre — the highest level under the BJP-led government, while diesel RATes touched a record high of ?65.65, renewing calls for cut in excise duty to ease burden on consumers. State-owned oil firms, which have been since June last year revising auto fuel prices daily, on Sunday raised petrol and diesel RATes by 19 paisa per litre each in Delhi, according to a price notification. The...