“Don’t teach us what is sanitation and hygiene.” This quote from Maqbul, a middle-aged male resident in Modher Bosti, a slum in Dhaka city, summed up the frustration of many people living in urban poverty to ongoing sanitation and hygiene programmes. In the light of their experiences, such programmes provide “inappropriate sanitation”, or demand personal investments in situations of highly insecure tenure, and/or teach “hygiene practices” that relate neither to local beliefs nor to the ground realities of a complex urban poverty.

Squatters' organizations are a notable driving force of civil society movements in Nepal. Their alliance, working on urban squatter issues, has been trying to change their strategy from one of confrontation with government authorities to one of collaboration with multiple stakeholders, including non-squatter neighbours. This paper reviews a decade of squatters' movement in Nepal.

This paper presents and discusses primary data from a survey of 1,070 households in four poor settlements in Mumbai comprising slum-and pavement-dwellers and squatters on the living environment and health conditions. The study attempts to examine the consequences of socio-economic and environmental factors in terms of income, literacy, sanitation and hygiene for morbidity.

The registrar of trade unions has refused to acknowledge the Bal Mazdoor Union BMU , an association of working children in Delhi. Though the Delhi High Court has upheld the order of the registrar, the BMU refuses to give up and intends to appeal.

Butterflies, a non government organisation, is helping street children to organise themselves and operate a restaurant in the Capital's main bus terminus.

A voluntary group helps street children by organising them into associations and building a home for them.