-The Indian Express Anganwadi workers, teachers, nurses are paid low salaries, their work devalued Frontline workers providing basic services through various government programmes form the backbone of the country’s social welfare system. India’s ability to achieve its SDGs or to have a healthy skilled workforce that contributes towards economic progress or social and human development depends to a large extent on the performance of teachers, nurses, anganwadi workers, panchayat secretaries and...

-The Indian Express New India cannot view empowerment of women merely as economic resource. Last month, Niti Aayog released a report on state-level progress across various indicators under the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The comprehensive index score on gender equality (Goal 5) revealed that all Indian states, except Kerala and Sikkim, fall in the red zone, signifying low performance. Despite such worrisome findings in its own report, Niti Aayog’s almost simultaneously...

-Scroll.in Trade unionists fear a large part of the unorganised sector might be left out of the ambit of the government’s labour code on social security. Rekha Patil, a vegetable seller on a footpath in suburban Mumbai, is a small part of India’s vast informal economy. Her husband, a farmer in Palghar, about 110 km north of Mumbai, has an unreliable income. But Patil’s earnings of Rs 350 a day barely sustain...

-PTI Globally, the unpaid work done by women is worth 43-times Apple’s annual turnover, according to the Oxfam report Davos: Unpaid work done by women across the globe amounts to a staggering $10 trillion a year, which is 43 times the annual turnover of the world’s biggest company Apple, an Oxfam study said on Monday. In India, the unpaid work done by women looking after their homes and children is worth 3.1% of...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...