- 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...

-Hindustan Times In accordance with a Supreme Court judgment of 2014, compensation of ₹10 lakh each is paid to the families of those who have died while cleaning sewers or septic Tanks from the year 1993 onwards. New Delhi: A parliamentary standing committee has expressed disappointment over the delay in release of compensation to the families of 104 people who died while cleaning sewer or septic Tanks manually, saying that there appears...

-Hindustan Times The World Bank should ensure “greater transparency and accountability” while factoring in subjective opinion-based indices as inputs for its World Governance Indicators (WGI) that has significant weightage in sovereign ratings, the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) said in a series of tweets citing an internal working paper, and called for independent Indian think Tanks to bring out similar perception-based indices for the world in order to...

-Newsclick.in The farmers are also demanding free electricity for irrigation and grants for borewells, tubewells, ponds and Tanks, as promised by BJP during the last Assembly election. Lucknow: Sugarcane farmers of Kaptanganj sugar mill, in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and surrounding villages have been protesting outside the tehsil under the banner of multiple unions demanding payment of around Rs 44 crore due for the ongoing crushing season for almost two...

-The Telegraph Radhakamal Mukerjee: an ecological pioneer In 1922, a professor at Lucknow University named Radhakamal Mukerjee published a book called Principles of Comparative Economics. Reading the book one hundred years later, I was struck by the attention it paid to the impact of the natural environment on the social and economic life of Indian villages. Mukerjee was perhaps the first Indian scholar to recognise the vital importance of common property resources...