-The Business Standard   International organisations recognise the impending shortage of potable water but their approach is entirely wrong During this year's gathering in Davos, the World Economic Forum released its ninth annual Global Risks report, which relies on a survey of more than 700 business leaders, government officials and non-profit actors to identify the world's most serious risks in the next decade. Perhaps most remarkably, four of the 10 threats listed this...

-Down to Earth Grand old party of India renews some old promises and makes some new ones, but will Congress live up to its promises if it wins a third term? The Indian National Congress (INC) presented its manifesto for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections on Wedneday. The manifesto committee claimed the 48-page document was prepared after wide consultations by engaging millions of people, grassroots congress workers and every section of the...

-The Hindu More needs to be done to enforce the law banning manual scavenging. This monsoon, India's Parliament passed a law of enormous social significance prohibiting and punishing manual scavenging, which remains the most degrading form of untouchability and caste discrimination in the country. This is not the first time this practice was outlawed: untouchability and forced labour were forbidden in the Constitution itself and, in 1993, a law was first passed...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Lok Sabha today passed the protection and rehabilitation of scavengers bill, which had been on the backburner for years. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012, is aimed at amending and replacing the existing Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, which activists say remains just on paper. Bezwada Wilson, founder and national convener of the Safai Karmachari...

-The Hindu New Delhi: Moni will never forget July 13, the last day she spent with her father Ashok. The following noon he went inside a drain sewer in the basement of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in the heart of Lutyens' Delhi and did not return. Hit by the poisonous rush of gases, Ashok and two of his colleagues died on the spot. Till date there has...