New Delhi, May 11, 2012: Three big cities — Mumbai, Kolkata and Bangalore — have been rated below average compared to other mega cities in Asia-Pacific in terms of keeping pollution levels in check, said a report of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Delhi is the only Indian city featured in the average category.

Delhi, May 11, 2012: Outside the shiny MCD building near Moolchand flyover sits security guard Aslam. He has been guarding the seven-star toilet-cum-coffee shop against vandals for more than a year and half now.

The toilet complex, constructed ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, has never been used. It is among the nine prototypes that were built two years ago. The plan was to replicate them across the city.

New Delhi, May 7, 2012:  New Delhi Houselisting and Housing Only 78.4 per cent houses have provision for drinking water on premises, 3.3 per cent still defecate in the open. Drinking water and sanitation, the two basic civic needs, are still lacking from many parts of the city, the Houselisting and Housing Census 2011 has found. The findings of the census were released on Monday.

New Delhi, April 25, 2012:  Noting that the amount allocated for construction of toilets in rural areas was very low, the government today said it would hike the fund under the total sanitation programme from Rs 2,200 to Rs 9,900 per household. "

New Delhi, April 25, 2012: Nearly 30 million school children in the country still have no access to toilets, even as schools have made significant progress in providing the facility in recent years, a study by UNICEF's Water, Sanitation, Hygiene(WASH) programme revealed Wednesday.

Most schools are also found wanting in teaching of hygiene and life skills.

New Delhi, April 21, 2012: Municipal corporation or state officials could face two years in jail or Rs 2 lakh fine for the familiar sight of bare torsos plumbing the depths of sewer tanks to clean the muck with their hands.
The Centre proposes to ban ‘hazardous manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks’ with stiff penal provisions. It plans to make it mandatory for employers to provide cleaning devices and protective gear to the staff tasked with cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.

New Delhi, March 30, 2012: A report on the condition of toilets in Delhi's government schools has painted a grim picture of neglect and apathy towards the lives and hygiene of lakhs of children.

The survey of the schools toilets was carried out by Alliance For People's Rights & its Associates, which has been working towards ground-level implementation of the newly-introduced Right to Education Act, 2009. The exercise was carried across 44 schools and 318 toilets were visited by the members of the group in January and February this year.

Girls under ten being have been raped while on their way to use a public toilet, say women living in Delhi’s slums. In one slum, boys hid in toilet cubicles at night waiting to rape those who entered. These are some of the incidents mentioned in a recent briefing note based on research supported by WaterAid and the DFID-funded SHARE (Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity).

New Delhi, Mar 3, 2012: With the blazing summers ahead, several organisations have come together to form the 'Pani Hakk Abhiyan' to protest privatisation and commercialisation of drinking water in the Capital. The campaign also plans to make it as an election issue during the upcoming municipal polls.

New Delhi, Feb 27, 2012: The Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad has said that learnings and lessons from the Polio programme could prove to be extremely useful in accomplishing the tasks of elimination of measles related child deaths and neonatal tetanus in India. Shri Azad however emphasised that continued vigil, effective emergency preparedness and response needs to be maintained as we cannot afford to let our guards now on polio virus.