-The Hindu The production of waste in India is growing at an exponential rate. However, the welfare and dignity of the informal workers involved in the stigmatised sector of waste management remains at the bottom of any government’s political agenda. Human society has always produced waste and always will. Waste materials — substances without value — are constantly generated in all production, all distribution and all consumption processes. The time waste spends...

-The Times of India India and her neighbors are going through a tortuous process of urbanization - slow, messy and partly hidden. This is seen in severe problems of livability and congestion, making cities unattractive for rural migrants. As a result, whatever benefits urban agglomerations could have offered in terms of economic advance are getting diluted. This is the dire analysis of a 200-page World Bank report on urbanization in South...

-The Hindu The AP government should keep the MoUs (with investors) in the public domain. Let there be a debate on the MoUs -- Jayati Ghosh, economist VIJAYAWADA: Noted economist Jayati Ghosh does not agree that civil society has been indifferent to the problems presented to farmers due to the land acquisition tactics adopted by the State Government in gathering land for its capital city project. The academic, who headed a commission that investigated...

-Hindustan Times Millions of domestic migrants in India may soon get to vote in elections in their native areas without leaving their places of employment if a government proposal to extend postal ballot facilities to them is successful. Sources said a committee of ministers has been asked to examine the possibility of allowing the choice of postal ballots — both electronically and through proxy voters — to domestic migrant labourers and workers,...

-Livemint.com India needs to invest more in developing rural infrastructure The script is familiar. After borrowing heavily for inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, farmers in most parts of India wait for the monsoon. When the rain fails, the farmers’ agony begins. Forced MIgration to cities in search of manual work, distress sales of land and, in extreme cases, suicides are the way out. This kharif season has a distressingly familiar ring...