After right to education and information, citizens will soon get right to clean drinking water and sanitation. In a new draft National Water Policy, the water resources ministry has suggested that the access to safe drinking water and sanitation be regarded as a right. Around one-third of the Indians don't have access to clean drinking water and more than half of the country's population to clean sanitation. Only 42.2% people in Jharkhand and...

The lesson for India after Durban is that it needs to formulate an approach that combines attention to industrialised countries’ historical responsibility for the problem with an embrace of its own responsibility to explore low carbon development trajectories. This is both ethically defensible and strategically wise. Ironically, India’s own domestic national approach of actively exploring “co-benefits” – policies that promote development while also yielding climate gains – suggests that it...

-The Telegraph   The country’s top judge today advised the judiciary to work as independently of public sentiments as of politics, stressing that courts should deliver rulings according to the law and not the majority opinion. “Apart from independence from politics, the judiciary also needs independence from popular interest,” PTI quoted Chief Justice of India (CJI) S.H. Kapadia as saying while presiding over the Nani Palkhivala Memorial Trust Lecture in Mumbai. “If an order...

Migration is fuelling India's HIV epidemic. National AIDS Control Organisation's latest figures show that besides high risk populations like sex workers, the highest burden of HIV is among migrants - 3.6%, which is 10 times the HIV prevalence among the general population.  With migration rates increasing, the prevalence will only get worse. According to the 2001 census, 30.1% of the population was considered to have migrated (314 million) - a considerable...

-IANS Still nursing the sting of ally Trinamool Congress opposing the Lokpal Bill in the Rajya Sabha citing issues of federal autonomy, the United Progressive Alliance ( UPA) government wants to take the states into confidence on Sonia Gandhi's dream project - the National Food Security Bill, 2011. The bill was tabled in the Lok Sabha during the winter session of parliament last year and will now go to the standing committee...