Just as the Union Cabinet approved a Bill seeking to protect women from sexual harassment at workplaces, a survey by a non-government organisation has claimed that nearly 88 per cent of the female workforce in Indian Information Technology and business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing (BPO/KPO) companies reported having suffered some form of workplace sexual harassment during the course of their work. Close to 50 per cent women had been...

Among the several resolutions passed on Thursday by the 9th conference of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) in Kanpur, one of the most important ones was on the need to regulate microfinance institutions (MFIs), which are exercising an iron grip on poor women debtors in several States of the country. The resolution drew attention to the “spate of suicides as a result of the harassment and strong-arm tactics employed...

Few will take very seriously the undertaking given by the government in the Supreme Court that River Ganga will be pure and free of pollution by 2020. Similar commitments were made to the public 25 years ago when, in 1985, the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) to clean this most treasured of the sub-continent’s rivers was launched. Even after spending several thousand crores of rupees on the project, the Ganga is...

The latest Human Development Report, or HDR, (2010), marking its 20th anniversary, is both remarkable and useful. Remarkable because it brims with intellectual confidence, born out of a sense of vindication over the “conceptual brilliance and continued relevance” of Mahbub ul-Huq’s original human development paradigm set out in the first sentence of the 1990 report — “People are the real wealth of nations.” The idea of human development, which, through...

Having failed to reach an agreement with the government on the price control mechanism, Opposition parties, including the Left parties, Samajwadi Party and Telugu Desam Party, plan to oppose the contentious Seeds Bill, 2004 that the government is going to move in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday for consideration and passing. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has given notice for at least 30 amendments to the Bill on which there are major...