The United Nations Conference on Women was held nearly 15 years ago in Beijing, China. This was an extraordinary moment in the history of the international women’s movements as well as women workers around the world, with unprecedented mobilisation of feminist policymakers, activists and academics in the international political arena, both prior to the conference and subsequently. The two-part conference, referred to as Beijing Platform and the Call for Action,...

Only a process of reverse migration based on the Gandhian model can save India’s cities, and also rural India.  A report prepared by the United Nations Development Programme reveals that in India’s big cities more than 40 per cent of the people live in slums. Some of them have reasonable levels of income, but cannot afford other housing. For many reasons including the population load, slums are unhygienic. It is...

There is a growing chorus of views - representing some very influential writers in India and elsewhere - in favour of direct cash transfer into poor people's bank accounts as a more efficient social security net than the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Economist Arvind Panagariya has called direct cash transfer ''the least costly policy to give immediate relief to the poor". Having returned from a series of field...

Workers who found jobs through temporary employment agencies were among the first to find themselves out of work as a result of the global financial and economic crises, according to a new United Nations report released today. The International Labour Organization (ILO) report noted that the largest number of temporary job losses was recorded in the manufacturing sector of developed countries, especially in the car industry. Spotlighting Germany, where between...

The Bhilwara social audit team repeatedly came up against resistance. Yet the coming together of civil society and government in Rajasthan augurs well for the future of NREGA.  For watchers of India’s grassroots democracy, the place to be in recently was Bhilwara in Rajasthan; the town and the countryside were decked out in carnival colours for an audit exercise that saw thousands come together — social rights activists led by...