Bihar Flood Disaster Management Committee and Delhi Young Artistes Forum are organizing a Cycle Rally from Bhagat Singh Park to Parliament of India between 17th and 24th November, 2009. The cycle rally under this event is expected to cover the entire city. The objective behind this event is to raise awareness about the huge loss to life and property caused by Kosi river flooding and other such natural calamities in...

Women currently make up around half of the world’s migrant population, even without taking into consideration short-term and seasonal movements. Despite the widespread prevalence of female migration, there are still some common stereotypes about its nature: that it is mostly women and girls accompanying their male heads of household, or dominantly by young, unmarried women, mostly for marriage or for some defined work enabled by contractors. Yet the migration of...

Taking a leaf out of the Andhra Pradesh’s book, Rajasthan Government has decided to institutionalize social audits for effective monitoring and implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). A part of the Ashok Gehlot-led Government’s commitment is to set up a full time Directorate of Social Audits to ensure regular execution of social audits and their follow ups. The new programme is likely to be launched on October...

Several civil society organisations of Tamil Nadu are getting together to organise a Peoples’ Audit in the state to assess the need and efficacy of the proposed 139 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) that are in various stages of approval. The audit will take place from October 24 to October 26 and members of the media are welcome to participate and witness the exercise in the presence of eminent economists, social...

The release of the United Nations’ 2009 Human Development Report is likely to start many much-needed conversations. The report, which is produced annually by the United Nations Development Programme or UNDP, is generally scrutinised for its “rankings” — in which countries’ relative positions in terms of how well they support individual development are ranked. Much will be made of India’s relative fall in the rankings — and, possibly, of China’s...