-The Business Standard The structural changes in India's rural workforce Seldom in the past has the country's labour market gone through structural changes faster than it has in recent years. Apart from a sharp decline in the proportion of workers employed in agriculture, the perceptible withdrawal of women from the workforce is the most striking feature of India's labour market. Going by the numbers the census and the National Sample Survey Office...

-Outlook The case of the gutsy young Tehelka journalist, who has blown the cover on the sexual assault she faced from Tarun Tejpal, underlines the need to enforce the implementation of the Vishaka guidelines Listen. Can you hear it? That low growl on the horizon, coming closer, growing louder? It's the dam bursting its bounds. It's the quiet shriek of convivial silence being ripped apart. The silence around the normalizing of a...

-The Telegraph Ranchi: The lid is off a basic reason why generations of girls drop out of school, never discovering their potential. Schools, state-run or otherwise, may have a toilet, but if existing loos lack basics such as privacy or water, girls prefer to stay at home. Reason - they feel too unsafe and ashamed to answer nature's call or take care of personal hygiene during menstruation. A detailed research on life skills...

-Down to Earth Half of India's population defecates in the open. In all probability, they will continue to do so for the next 10 years By the time you read this article, some 600 million Indians must have taken that first call of nature. But for most, it must have been very unusual: to take that hesitant and humiliating step out of their homes to defecate in the open. Everyday, an...

-The Hindu ‘Report has permitted uncontrolled quarrying in most parts of ghats' Kochi (Kerala): The Kasturirangan report has thrown open the ecologically sensitive areas of Western Ghats to mindless exploitation which would seriously hazard ecology, according to its critics. According to member of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) V.S. Vijayan: the report has in a way permitted uncontrolled quarrying in most parts of the ghats regions of the State. Those...