-Economic and Political Weekly The current regime seeks to reform labour laws with the understanding that these reforms will improve industrial growth and expand the possibilities of enterprise. However, there is already ample evidence from within India that this obsession with reforming labour law, particularly in the way the government has done it till now, will not take us any closer in creating more jobs or a healthy industrial sector. These...

-The Hindu Business Line   The Open Government Data initiative is gaining ground, but it needs to be in step with the Central Information Commission Open government data (OGD) is fashionable. Governments and public institutions in Europe and other parts of the globe are making increasing numbers of datasets available to the public by means of national, regional, local or thematic portals, in keeping with their political commitments towards open government and open...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that guarantees employment of every rural household for 100 days has different progressive provisions to incentivise participation of women in the programme. Official data suggest that 47% of all MGNREGA workers are women. The extent to which the programme is inclusive of women, with a particular focus on sub-populations of women such as widows and mothers of young children...

-World Bank Adequacy in three basic nutritional areas show reduced stunting even in poorest districts New Delhi: Stunting (Described as low height for age) in Indian children, 6 to 24 months of age, could be dramatically reduced if children receive three things that are critical for good nutrition - adequate feeding, health care and environmental health, says a new World Bank report which analyzes data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)...

-The Hindu 30 per cent of rural and 20 per cent of urban households said they practised untouchability Just five per cent of Indians said they had married a person from a different caste, says the first direct estimate of inter-caste marriages in India. The India Human Development Survey (IHDS), conducted by the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland, also reported that 30 per cent of rural...