India Today

Cleanest religious place Winner: Shirdi Temple, Ahmednagar Why it won: Tech and out-of-the-box methods helped the change the temple town's outlook In the three years since his appointment as chairman of the Shri Saibaba Sansthan Trust, Suresh Haware,

Toilet titan Winner: Swades Foundation Why it won: For bringing sanitation and hygiene to rural India, especially for women and schoolgoing girls In 2004, Ronnie Screwvala produced Swades, a film in which Shah Rukh Khan played a NASA scientist who gi

Cleanest village Winner: Bagor Why it won: The village has been able to practise solid waste management despite its hilly terrain When Baldev Singh Thakur, pradhan of the Nauni Majhgaon panchayat in Himachal Pradesh, first broached the subject of toi

Most EffectiveMost Effective Swachhata Ambassador Winner: Sachin Tendulkar Why it won: For using his popularity and fame to ensure India achieves its goal of a Swachh Bharat To be able to play, to dream, to be healthy, to drink clean water, to be wel

Water warrior Winner: Water Literacy Foundation (WLF) and Ayyappa Masagi Why it won: The WLF's pan-India initiatives have helped farmers with water-conservation techniques A native of the drought-prone district of Gadag, Karnataka, Ayyappa Masagi, no

Cleanest City Winner: Surat Municipal Corporation Why it won: For introducing a comprehensive waste management system After the plague scare of 1994, cleanliness became an obsession for Surat. It found itself consistently on top of the list of India'

Best Institute for Sanitation Skills Winner: Global Interfaith WASH Alliance Why it won: Committed to water, sanitation and hygiene, GIWA's 'toilet college' in Rishikesh has trained more than 6,000 people It was in September 2013, that Swami Chidanan

How do liberal democracies die? Slowly, gradually and piecemeal, according to Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq, co-authors of How to Save a Constitutional Democracy. Both professors at the University of Chicago Law School, they examine the processes thro

Best River-Cleaning Initiative Winner: Siruthuli Why it won: For its work to rehabilitate water bodies around Coimbatore and its initiative to restore the Noyyal river A Bustling city on the banks of the Noyyal river, Coimbatore has suffered signific

Frank Dikรถtter is the historian of China whose three volume People's History documented and made the world aware of the violence and suffering caused by Maoism in the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution. In his new book, he has included four

If wishes were fishes There's been a temporary truce in the fish-and-water cold war between the two ruling ladies of erstwhile undivided Bengal. In 2011, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had refused to share the Teesta river waters with Ban

Sixty years ago, when Trincas opened its doors on Kolkata's Park Street as a nightclub, it already had 'iconic' written all over it. On September 27 and 28, the tearoom-turned-nightclub turned back the clock. Owners Deepak and Shashi Puri and their s

The crisis at the Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative bank (PMC bank) has jeopardised the savings of hundreds of thousands of depositors, and raised fresh concerns about corporate governance standards in Indian banks. On September 23, at the close of bu

The path slopes downwards, lit by floor lights, with metallic rings protruding from both walls. "It sloped so that artillery could be brought down easily," says Umesh Kashikar, the public relations officer of the Raj Bhavan in Mumbai, as he leads the

On October 5, three days after the country celebrates Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary, the South Asian Symphony Orchestra will draw a musical grid that connects our nation's father to Ludwig van Beethoven. The orchestra, a group of musicians

Fame is Elizabeth Taylor's cleavage. This stuff is just a media pimple.' That was the voice of painter Elaine Risley from Margaret Atwood's 1988 novel Cat's Eye, when an interviewer asked how she handled fame. Risley's life and style echoed the autho

I swung by Anand Bhawan LAST Monday, preparing myself to write about Gitanjali Surendran's "intimate history" thereof. Since it was both a Monday and a public holiday-Eid-ul-Zuha-the gates were securely locked, so I had no option but to stare at the

In the run-up to the Lok Sabha election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi mocked his adversaries as the 'Khan Market gang', in a damning reference to their supposed love of the tony market complex in central Delhi's Lutyens Bungalow Zone, home to the nat

Best Waste Wealth Creators Winner: South Delhi Municipal Corporation for the Waste to Wonder Park Why it won: For using a reclaimed landfill and 150 tonnes of industrial waste to create a public green space If you live in Delhi and want selfies in fr

In a rare gesture, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar came to see off 'rebel' nephew Ajit after an hour-and-a-half-long 'family meeting' at his Mumbai home on September 28. Ajit had resigned the previous day as the party legislator f

When Rajendra S. Bidhuri, Congress MLA from Begu in Chittorgarh district, informed Dinesh M.N., IGP, Anti-Corruption Bureau, about SHO Virendra Singh Charan offering him a Rs 50 lakh share of the bribes he collects from the illegal opium husk trade,

Calling the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, launched by the Narendra Modi government five years ago, a mass movement, President Ram Nath Kovind, on October 2, congratulated the prime minister for achieving the dream of a clean, open defecation-free (ODF) Indi

A new epidemic has gripped Bengal, a fear of the NRC (National Register of Citizens)-and it has already claimed 11 lives, as per the state government's claims. In the past few weeks, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) has tried to pin the blame for