-The Hindu Although urban Indians are slowly showing more openness in their attitudes towards women's attire, this is not the case when it comes to the issue of son preference As one of the world's most socially heterogeneous societies, building solidarity across social groups has been a singular challenge in India. Social bias in India is pervasive across a range of key cleavages - whether caste or class, region or religion. In this...

-The Hindustan Times At a time when global political and business leaders are discussing at the World Economic Forum in Davos ways to be more socially responsible and reduce social divide, a report says most Indian businesses lag behind in fulfilling their corporate social responsibility (CSR). According to the report published by German development aid agency Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GiZ) in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs...

-AFP Paris: Wealth accumulated by the richest 1% will exceed that of the other 99% in 2016, the Oxfam charity said on Monday, ahead of the annual meeting of the world's most powerful at Davos, Switzerland. "The scale of global inequality is quite simply staggering and despite the issues shooting up the global agenda, the GAP between the richest and the rest is widening fast," Oxfam executive director Winnie Byanyima said. The richest...

-Down to Earth The situation of India's farmers has only become grimmer in the past decade, according to the latest National Sample Survey Office report The lot of the embattled Indian farmer only keeps on getting worse with the passage of time. In the last 10 years, the voluminous debt of Indian agricultural households has increased almost four-fold whereas their undersized monthly income from cultivation has increased three-fold. Even the number of...

-Livemint.com For the same level of learning outcomes and at their current efficacy levels, govt schools require additional spending far greater than current education budget The new Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) shows that deterioration in learning outcomes has been arrested in 2014, but absolute numbers are still dismal. Less than half of class 5 students can read a text of class 2 level; less than half of class 8 students...