-Hindustan Times When Prime Minister Narendra Modi met some prominent billionaires last month, seeking quicker job-creation and investments, many industrialists complained that falling rural demand for goods was rocking their boats too. Incomes of India’s 833 million mostly poor rural population – a huge market for all kinds of goods – are barely rising and it is a cause for worry. Farming contributes just 15% of India’s $2 trillion economy, but half...

-The Hindu The production of waste in India is growing at an exponential rate. However, the welfare and dignity of the informal workers involved in the stigmatised sector of waste management remains at the bottom of any government’s political agenda. Human society has always produced waste and always will. Waste materials — substances without value — are constantly generated in all production, all distribution and all consumption processes. The time waste spends...

The Skill India Mission was launched by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi on 15 July, 2015 with much fanfare. However, a new report from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) informs us that among persons aged 15 years and above, only 2.4 percent had technical degrees, diplomas or certificates in 2011-12. Based on the 68th round of National Sample Survey (NSS), the report says that the proportion...

-BBC National Highway 44 is a road with a deadly reputation. Hyderabad: It connects India's north and south and has been blamed for the deaths of an alarming number of south Indian tribal villagers who live alongside it. One such village is Peddakunta, belonging to the Mahbubnagar district of Telangana, and lying adjacent to the highway bypass. Tiny Peddakunta is easy to locate because of its reputation as the "village of highway widows". In the...

-The Hindu Study finds that bondage has spread from farm sector to fast-food chains, carpet-making units BENGALURU: The banned system of bonded labour, albeit with a new twist, still survives among us. About 7,646 people are forced to work in bondage in different districts of Karnataka, according to a report submitted by a committee constituted to study the prevalence of the practice in the State. The committee, headed by journalist Sivaji Ganesan, submitted...