-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Delhi has always been a melting pot - people from across the country come here to study or to work. But in the past decade there appears to have been a change in the composition of its population. Uttar Pradesh continues to be the state from which the largest share of migrants come to Delhi-about 47%, up from about 43% in 2001. But the biggest...

-Frontline The midday meal scheme is a grand idea in a flawed school system. "THEY played here, studied here and got buried here!" (Yahin khela, yahin padha aur yahin ho gaya dafan). With these emphatic words, grieving parents buried the bodies of two children within the compound of the Dharmasati Gandaman Primary School of Masharakh block in Saran district of Bihar. This sentiment was expressed with great dignity even in the...

-The Business Standard   The food security ordinance would empower poor urban migrants to challenge denial of ration cards The new Food Security Ordinance provides virtually nothing and yet quite a lot. What it provides is food as a legal right. And that means a lot for a poor migrant in a city chawl, with no local address proof, having left all identity cards back in their native village and unable to claim anything...

-The Hindu Indentured labour may be a forgotten part of our colonial economic history but Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh are still sending ‘Girmitya' to toil in distant lands The descendants of indentured labourers, who migrated from eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to erstwhile colonies, recently met at The Hague in the Netherlands to commemorate 140 years of migration - perpetuated through a system popularly known as ‘Girmit.' They gathered from all...

-Outlook As the Manmohan Singh government makes evident its unfriendliness to villages, the nation hurtles towards disaster. It's a danger no one wants to face. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been trying for years to make us believe that agriculture is a vast marshland in which a huge population is stuck ankle- to neck-deep and it is his duty to rescue them. "Our salvation lies in moving people out of agriculture," he...