-The Week Shambhu Kumar, 8, quite liked his job as a domestic help in a small town in Assam. He had to mind two children nearly his age, keep an eye on the ducks and be available for chores all day. It wasn't too hard, and he was well fed, too, though he missed his grandmother, a tea garden labourer. One day, some women from the state education department came to the...

-The Times of India A Reserve Bank of India paper says that the UPA flagship MGNREGA or the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, under which a household is assured of 100 days of wages per year in return for working on various rural development, has not actually contributed to the rise in food inflation as generally perceived. Incidently, the Reserve Bank was among the first to point that the...

-GRIST Media If hard work and enterprise inevitably made you prosperous, every rural woman would be a millionaire. These women have borne the brunt of the radical, often brutal transformation of rural India these past two decades. Our writers examine the hardships they continue to face as well as their remarkable vision to solve some of the greatest problems of our times such as food security, environmental justice and developing a...

-Livemint A Kerala-based company is making next-generation public toilets affordable The flush toilet as we know it today has been in use since 1775, when a Scottish watchmaker called Alexander Cumming patented it. It has changed little in its 239-year existence, if you discount the frills. Can technology that ancient tackle India's enormous toilet problem? The 2011 Census says nearly 12% of urban India does not have access to toilets, a number...

-The Hindu Panchayat takes uncultivated land on lease for farming ALAPPUZHA (Kerala): Any visitor to Thazhakara grama panchayat in Mavelikara taluk is bound to be welcomed by vast expanses of paddy fields. The local body has scripted a success story by reviving paddy cultivation and vegetable farming on a land that remained barren for around three decades. The panchayat achieved the turnaround by identifying uncultivated land and convincing private landowners to provide such...