-Down to Earth   100,000 young children and teenage girls are victims of 'bonded labour' in Tamil Nadu; dalit girls worse off An international organisation working for welfare of workers has drawn attention to the hazardous and exploitative working conditions of young girls working for the garment sector in Tamil Nadu. An estimated 100,000 children and teenage girls are working in extremely oppressive conditions in the spinning mills and garment factories in Tamil Nadu,...

-The Hindu   The impressive gain by rural households in spite of the favouritism towards non-primary activities appears real The Indian economy has moved on a high growth path since the mid-1980s. After a blip in growth between 1990-92, liberalisation, initiated for aligning the Indian economy with the world in 1991, not only put the economy back on a higher growth path but also sustained this growth till the 2000s. During the last...

-The Indian Express   Crops not enough to sustain them, farmers make it work with dairy, fishery, and implement hiring.   Jalandhar: When Harinder Singh of Bhamri village in Kadian block of Gurdaspur district graduated in 2008, his family wanted him to take up postgraduation and go abroad to improve his prospects. Harinder, however, had other ideas - he insisted that he would stay on in the village and follow the family occupation of...

-Down to Earth Kerala launches an on-line campaign on dalit and adivasi concerns On December 2, 2012, when Andhra Pradesh Assembly passed a legislation to give legal protection to the special funds meant for the welfare of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (SC/ST) communities, it was described as historic. The Andhra Pradesh Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan and Tribal Sub-Plan (Planning, Allocation and Utilisation of Financial Resources) Act of 2012, first of its kind...

-The Hindu Chennai: For the past two months, farmers of five blocks in Tiruvallur have been working hard to double the output of pulses in the district. The farmers of Minjur, Cholavaram, Gummidipoondi, Ellapuram and Tiruvallur blocks have brought more land under rice fallow-crop cultivation. In this method, seeds of pulses, including green gram, are sown a few days before the paddy harvest and the seeds germinate due to the little moisture...