-Reuters   The number of maids has surged by close to 70% from 2001 to 2010, says the ILO New Delhi: Millions of maids working in middle class Indian homes are part of up an informal and "invisible" workforce where they are abused and exploited due to a lack of legislation to protect them, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said on Wednesday. Economic reforms that began in the early 1990s have transformed the...

-Grain.org "We take care of the cow and the cow takes care of us," says Marayal, a farmer in Thalavady, Tamil Nadu. Her two cows produce 6 to 10 litres of milk a day, which she sells for 30-40 cents per litre. Across India, there are millions of backyard dairy farmers like Marayal. Each owning just one or two cows, these farmers supply millions more families and hundreds of thousands of informal...

-Frontline The tussle within some Central government Ministries over proposed cuts in the budget for rural development schemes has affected a promise made to senior citizens. THEIR wizened faces said it all. Though there was disappointment, there was also a glimmer of hope that their trek to the national capital would not go in vain. For almost a month, senior citizens, most of them poor, had been pouring into New Delhi from...

-The Hindu "Make Pravasi Baratiya Divas more democratic, inclusive" Representatives of migrant, domestic worker and human rights organisations, besides trade unions, held a demonstration at Jantar Mantar here on Tuesday to demand that the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) be made more democratic, representative and inclusive. Stating that the PBD should be made a platform for discussing the problems of labour diaspora and that its agenda should include issues of migrant workers, the protestors...

-Live Mint Anand Sharma urges updating of rules under agriculture deal to fix ‘inherent flaws', help developing countries New Delhi: India on Monday rejected the World Trade Organization's (WTO) offer on food security rules in its present form ahead of the biannual ministerial conference of the multilateral trade body beginning Tuesday in Bali, further hardening India's position on the issue. The present draft text prepared in Geneva provides developing countries temporary relief...