-Business Standard Bitter gourd leads decline as green veggies nosedive up to 50% on Maharashtra's move to delist them from spot mandis Mumbai: Vegetables price have plunged in Mumbai over the past two weeks, on a sudden increase in direct supply from farmers to retailers and bulk consumers, following the state government’s removal of the legal compulsion for farmers to sell only at regulated wholesale markets (mandis). Prices of green vegetables have...

-The Hindu The amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, passed by Parliament recently, demonstrate a lack of national commitment to abolishing all forms of child labour. Instead of attempting an overhaul of legislation that has proved ineffective in curbing the phenomenon, Parliament has allowed children up to the age of 14 to be employed in ‘family enterprises’, and created a new category of ‘adolescents’ (the 14-18 age...

-BBC Four years ago, a group of upper-caste men arrived at Mehul Vinodbhai Kabira's modest two-room home in Gujarat and threatened to burn it down. Bhayla is a nondescript village of around 450 low slung brick-and-cement homes straddling a highway dotted by pharmaceutical, engineering and bio-tech factories. Most of the homes in this dense village are owned by land-owning upper castes, but around 70 belong to Dalits (formerly known as untouchables) like Mr...

-Livemint.com Reporting of sexual harassment complaints has increased from 2012-13 to 2014-15, but some sectors and smaller companies might be prone to serious under-reporting Mumbai: Last month, Tata Motors announced its decision to increase the number of women employees on the shop floor from 6% to 20% within two years. Both private players as well as the government are making efforts to encourage more Indian women to work across sectors. A...

-The Hindu We need to rethink social safety nets in India’s growing economy so that they can also focus on the accidents of life rather than solely on the accidents of birth. Sometimes the grand narratives of the Left and the Right do not seem to have any relationship with the lived experiences of ordinary Indians. For the past two decades, the Left has tried to expand social welfare programmes for the...