-TheGuardian.com Hardworking women in India care for family members, cook, clean, garden, sew and farm without getting paid. When will official statistics recognise this? Women’s participation in work is an indicator of their status in a society. Paid work offers more opportunities for women’s agency, mobility and empowerment, and it usually leads to greater social recognition of the work that women do, whether paid or unpaid. Where women’s work participation rates are relatively...

-The Indian Express The machines failed to click with farmers after the state government imported around 650 such machines from China and Japan and supplied them to the farmers on subsidy. Ludhiana: Paddy transplantation is on in full swing in the state and back in action this season are the forgotten transplanters. The machines failed to click with farmers after the state government imported around 650 such machines from China and Japan and...

-The Hindu Business Line Deepalaya, a library in a corner of Delhi, is quietly transforming lives of children by giving them access to books On Mondays and Fridays it’s easy to find the way to Deepalaya library, you just have to follow the children. Some are still in their school uniforms, most have changed into colourful ‘home wear’; and in groups of twos and threes, with books tucked under their arms, they...

-The Indian Express The budget recognises the crisis in rural India, but allocations do not match the talk In India now, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the time finance ministers spend talking about a particular issue in their budget speeches and the amount of money they actually allocate to deal with it. This was true of former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget speeches, but incumbent FM Arun Jaitley...

-BangaloreMirror.com Illiteracy, child marriage, poor dietary habits are the biggest hurdles in bringing change Three-year old Shivaranjini weighs nine kg, while her sister who is three years older weighs 12 kg. Both are at least one kg lower than the minimum recommended weight for their age. But they are not exceptions. Weak and underweight children, all bony hands and feet and nearly visible rib cages, are a common sight here. It's lunch time...