-The Business Standard E-waste disposal cannot ignore the informal sector The deadline for the enforcement of new electronic waste (e-waste) management norms is just a month or so away. And yet, most of the sector’s stakeholders seem quite unprepared. The E-waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011, notified almost a year ago as coming into effect from May 1 this year, require producers of electronic and white goods to take back their products...

  MGNREGA, which entitles millions of workers enrolled under it to at least Rs 100 a day for 100 days of work in a year, is undergoing an overhaul based on a set of recommendations of a committee headed by the Planning Commission member Mihir Shah.   Encapsulated in The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 - Operational Guidelines 2012 in what is being called “MGNREGA 2.0”, the recommendations aim for...

-The Hindu   The e-waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011, notified by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, have the potential to turn a growing problem into a development opportunity. With almost a year to go before the rules take effect, there is enough time to create the necessary infrastructure for collection, dismantling, and recycling of electronic waste. The focus must be on sincere and efficient implementation. Only decisive action can...

The recent high-profile cobalt radiation exposure case in Delhi is a warning signal for bigger disasters waiting to happen. While the reported incident is not commonplace, India is home to a large and rapidly growing inventory of hazardous waste. Much of this is handled by the poor in an extremely crude manner without observing any safety norms. Part of this hazardous waste is even dumped in landfill sites where many...

Around two decades ago, Lawrence Summers, then World Bank chief economist, outraged many when he argued in an internal memo that the economic logic behind dumping toxic waste in low-wage countries was “impeccable”. His rationale: less developed countries are “under-polluted” and that “foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality” would be lesser in countries with lower wages. Cut to now and the thing to ask is: does India too believe...