What does freedom mean in the time of Covid pandemic? indiatimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from indiatimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A crop of Dalitbahujan leaders dancing to the tune of ‘social harmony’
The endeavour for securing representation for the neglected communities seems to be more about the emancipation of their leaders. Swami Prasad Maurya, who was once a prominent BSP face in the struggle for freeing the backward classes from Brahmanism, is a case in point, says Kanwal Bharti
Social change and social justice are two distinct concepts. Social change involves replacing the system based on injustice and exploitation with a socialist order. That is why almost all the proponents of an equitable society have voiced the slogan of social change. In his early days, Kanshi Ram also talked about social change. But the status quoists countered it with the slogan of social justice, which Vishwanath Pratap Singh introduced into Indian politics.
Three years after Hyderabad got machines to end manual scavenging, sickness and degradation endure
While machines reduced the death rate among sanitation workers, fewer than 3% of them became entrepreneurs. 2 hours ago Two workers of the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board cleaning a manhole during the lockdown in 2020. | Almaas Masood/ Article-14
As he stood hunched over an open manhole, Venkatesh manoeuvered a high-power water hose connected to a little truck that was too small to enter the dank, narrow lane, as many work areas for sewer workers tend to be in Hyderabad.
A nervous man in his 30s, Venkatesh directed the jet of water downwards to clear a choked sewer. Four years ago, he would have to descend its dark, grimy depths and clear the block with a stick and hand, risking injury and possible death.
Delhi is trying to end manual scavenging by using sewer cleaning machines. Are its efforts working?
Two years after the project launch, little appears to have changed for the capital’s sanitation workers. The Delhi government s new machine at work in Srinivaspuri. | Salik Ahmed/ Article-14
It is an hour before dusk, and a blue vehicle of a small truck’s size is backing into a congested lane in a southern neighbourhood in India’s teeming capital city. Dust-caked cars and motorcycles line the road in Srinivaspuri, under a menacing mesh of electricity wires.
Two sanitation workers guide the driver as he reverses the vehicle, inch-by-inch, dodging a low-hanging wire here, a vehicle’s rear view mirror there and steers slowly to the end of the narrow lane. When he parks, the workers remove long iron hooks from the vehicle and use them to lift the lid of a blocked manhole, revealing a bubbling, filthy drain.