-The Telegraph New Delhi: Delhi's 1,800-odd municipal schools have declared a holiday tomorrow citing predictions of "very poor" smog and the health risk it poses, but critics rued that over a million poor children would miss their midday meals. Some parents said the slum children who go to these schools would be playing on the smoggy streets anyway if classes were closed. This is the first time so many schools will close in...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet Swachh Bharat initiative may be celebrating two years with much fanfare on Sunday but just a fifth of the respondents in a recent nationwide survey say local Municipalities have improved garbage collection or cleanliness. The study found the hygiene has visibly improved in only four states – three of them ruled by the BJP while the rest of India reported marginal or no...

-Outlook A crusader for Dalit rights, Bezwada Wilson, on reclaiming for the Dalits a life of human dignity in a structurally apathetic society. On many occasions, the Ramon Magsaysay Award has been bestowed on individuals of various ilks and ideological persuasions. For the first time, perhaps, it speaks to an issue that touches the lives of millions of people because an award for Bezwada Wilson (50) is an international acknowledgement of the...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Four months from now, the dynamics of local bodies is set to change. Half of 1.32 lakh posts in municipal corporations, Municipalities, town panchayats and panchayats will be represented by women — up from one-third now. The AIADMK government has notified the law guaranteeing 50% reservation for women in all local bodies. The legislation was passed in the last assembly in February . In an extra-ordinary gazette notification...

-The Hindu ‘Groundwater will not be a free resource’   New Delhi: The government has for the first time said that citizens had a right to safe water and laid out stringent rules on how corporations and large entities can extract groundwater in two separate pieces of draft legislation uploaded on the website of the Union Water Ministry and open for public comment. The Bills —in a first — also propose fines ranging from...