-The Telegraph New Delhi: The just released socio-economic and caste census data show more than 1.8 lakh manual scavengers in the country at a time virtually every state government has been denying their existence. Hundreds if not thousands in almost every state, including 2,500 in Bengal, told the surveyors they manually remove untreated human excreta from dry toilets, railway tracks and sewers - a practice banned by Parliament 22 years ago. State...

-IANS The Socio Economic and Caste Census of 2011 released on Friday reveals that over 1.8 lakh people from rural India are still engaged in Manual Scavenging despite the law prohibiting it. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act of 2013 prohibits any employment as manual scavengers and also promotes rehabilitation of these workers and their families. About 1,80,657 people are engaged in the practice, according to the census...

-The Hindu Rural women sew their way to empowerment, thanks to the Silai Schools. Saroj Namdev, 36, of Satlapur village, Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, is a housewife and mother of three. She struggled to provide her children food and education on her husband's small income. Then he lost his job and the family was reduced to penury. This pushed her out of her cocooned existence to become an entrepreneur. Saroj,...

-The Hindu The inequities in infrastructure could not be starker. While several schools continue to deny the most basic sanitation facilities for poorer children, a select band of them dangle air-conditioned classrooms and dormitories and other accessories before the more affluent ones. Repeated knuckle-rapping by the Supreme Court over the years has evidently had little effect on State administrations, as the case of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana illustrates. In October...

-The Hindu Washington: A top global human rights group has criticised the Indian government for its treatment of minorities, lack of protection for women's and children's rights, restrictions on free speech and insufficient support extended for human rights via New Delhi's foreign policy engagements. In its 25th annual World Report on human rights, New York-headquartered Human Rights Watch noted that there was a "spike" in incidents of violence against religious minorities in...