-The Hindu Considered a ‘cousin’ of Madhubani Mithila, but perhaps closer to Bengal’s Kantha work On a late winter morning a group of women — Pinki Devi, Khusbu, Chanchala, Sunita, Nutan and Bhibha Devi among them — sit on a large, grimy, black tarpaulin sheet in the part-shadow of a slouching tree in Bhusra village in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district. In their hands are colourful fabrics on which are emerging stories told through chain...

-The Indian Express Two loan defaults lead to two different outcomes, year upon year, a nightmare version of déjà vu. The former exits the country; the latter exits the mortal world. Liquor baron Vijay Mallya and diamond jeweler Nirav Modi could jointly run a crash course for the debt-ridden and beleaguered farmers of Vidarbha, nay the entire country: How to stay cool with unpaid debts. Mallya could tell the peasantry, for instance, how...

-Hindustan Times Increasing rates of girls’ education, proactive government investments in adolescent girls, and strong public messaging around the illegality of child marriage and the harm it causes attributed to the shift. From one in four to approximately one in five, child marriages have seen a decline world over in the past 10 years, a Unicef report released on Monday said. The proportion of women who were married as children decreased by 15%...

-Livemint.com Kerala govt’s aim is to build 500 sq. ft houses costing Rs4 lakh each, for which the state has tweaked the centre’s housing programme, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana Bengaluru: Building free houses for all the homeless in Kerala -- more than half-a-million at last count -- is one of the flagship projects of the Communist government. A cabinet meeting held on Tuesday night offers glimpses into the project’s nitty-gritty. The aim...

-The Times of India Nineteen-year-old Radha Dhanewale is one of the most eligible brides in Maharashtra’s Solapur. Families of prospective grooms arrive at the family’s tiny house every day. It’s not her education, horoscope or income that puts her at the top of the list — it’s a ‘bidi card’ she holds. “I have rolled bidis with my mother since my school days. A few years ago, I got a bidi card from...