- Scroll.in India prohibited manual scavenging in 1993. But it took another 20 years to expand its legal definition to include the manual cleaning of drains, sewers and septic tanks. Mumbai, with the richest municipal corporation in India, was among the worst offenders when it came to the implementation of the 2013 law. Records maintained by the Safai Karamchari Andolan, a national organisation working for the rights of sanitation workers, show 19...

-Scroll.in Anganwadi staff are vital to ensuring the wellbeing of India’s children. Yet in 2006, the Supreme Court refused to recognise them as government employees. The government of Karnataka needed a hundred women. It was 1982, the new Integrated Child Development Services scheme was about to launch in the state, and according to the advertisement in the local newspaper, these work opportunities were available specifically for women who had completed Class 10. Ameenabi...

-Scroll.in Though in many cases, oral health can be a matter of life or death, the country does not even have an oral health policy in place. Vandana Munishappa had a pink bandage across the left side of her jaw and a long line of stitches across her lower lip and her chin. The 14-year-old was petite for her age and her large, bright eyes made her seem much younger than she...

-Scroll.in The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns disrupted the education of millions of students in India. When schools reopened, many never went back. At 10 am on a Tuesday in November, a group of children aged around 7 walked slowly towards their school in Mudnal Dhodu Thaanda, a Banjara community settlement in North Karnataka’s Yadgir district. The children were dressed in their school uniform: light blue shirts and dark blue skirts and pants....

-Behanbox.com Mumbai: Around 400 metres off the Gujarat state highway near Vautha village, along the snake-like curves of the Sabarmati river, lie nearly a hundred acres of land that government records describe as “non-useful riverside land”. But on the ground, in early April, Baluben Makwana led me through a dirt path to an unexpected scene. On one side was a sprawling expanse of wheat fields, ripe stalks swaying gently in the wind...