-TheWire.in Without functioning hand pumps or any government intervention, villagers are being forced to drink contaminated water, exposing them to skin infections and diseases. Bundelkhand: Bundelkhand region, which is spread over 13 districts of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, has often been in the news due to acute drinking water shortage. As the heat wave intensified and the water crisis peaked in many parts of the region, I spent three days  –...

-IndiaSpend/ Business Standard In Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Jharkhand and Bihar, fewer than 50% of rural households have electricity As many as 73% of the 18,452 villages that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government identified for electrification in 2015 now have power supply, but only 8% of these villages had all their households electrified, according to the government’s own data. As of May 25, 2017, 13,523 villages have been electrified, but 100% household connectivity...

-The Hindu Liberalisation has eroded the institutional capacity to train young people who might pursue liberal values The other day, a student asked me what exactly the word ‘liberal’ mean. She wanted to know whether ‘liberalisation’ promotes ‘liberal’ values. She had noticed that institutions of higher education, which are supposed to promote liberal values, were finding it difficult to resist ideological and commercial pressures triggered by the process of economic liberalisation. So,...

-BBC Why are millions of women dropping out of work in India? The numbers are stark - for the first time in India's recent history, not only there was a decline in the female labour participation rate, but also a shrinking of the total number of women in the workforce. * Nearly 20 million Indian women quit work between 2004-05 to 2011-12 * The labour force participation rate for women of working age declined...

-Hindustan Times In a semi feudal and genderised society like ours, sexuality remains central everywhere; and rape looks like an indigenous, not an exceptional phenomena. Just days after Jyoti Singh’s killers were sentenced to death by the Supreme Court, on May 11, a similar case of gang rape and murder was reported from Rohtak in Haryana. Within the same week, another 10-year-old from the same area was found repeatedly raped by her stepfather...