Disability is widely recognized as a cross cutting developmental issue that has relevance to all dimensions of social exclusion. Even today, if we link up disability to developmental issues, it raises serious concerns where people with disabilities are at a double burden of marginalization. Disability has been seen as both the reason for and the consequence of poverty. Trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, people with disabilities are denied...

-The Business Standard   Vimla Devi is a committed anganwadi worker (AWW) in a remote village in Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state of India. Anganwadi is a village level institution under Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), one of the most talked about flagship programmes of the Indian Government. She is also the weakest link in a critical programme, which is underfunded, says Shantanu Gupta in the first of field-data reports, the...

-The Telegraph   The Sonia-Gandhi headed National Advisory Council will prod the government to bring a law to protect unorganised retail sector workers as it brings foreign direct investment into multi-brand retail. Sonia, the council chairperson and the Congress chief, showed the green flag to the government on FDI in retail. The NAC in 2005 had drafted the unorganised sector workers’ social security bill that proposed a national authority to oversee the implementation of...

Carrying forward from the opening of a school in Hamidpur Char & enrolling 378 children on Thursday, for whom education had been a distant dream come true, it was the day for yet another batch of 136 children enrolled in to a newly setup school in the age group of 6-8 yrs of Narayanpur Char in Manichak Block of Malda District, also visited by the 5 member Team of NCPCR...

The Planning Commission has received a sweeping set of recommendations that proposes free health care and medicines for diverse needs to all Indian citizens, irrespective of economic means. Whether or to what extent the proposals — described as “even bigger” than the UPA’s blockbuster job scheme — will be accepted will depend on the political and executive leadership. If the government throws its weight behind the initiative, it will effectively mean...