-The Hindu Female unemployment rose to 8.7% in 2015-16 from 7.7% a year earlier Jobless economic growth continues to haunt India's youth, with the country’s unemployment rate rising to a five-year high of five per cent in 2015-16, according to the latest annual household survey on employment conducted by Labour Bureau. India’s economy grew 7.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2015-16, slowing from 7.9 per cent a year earlier. The country’s...

-TheWire.in The law will benefit only a minuscule percentage of women, while ignoring the majority who are working as contractual labour, farmers, self-employed women and housewives. New Delhi: The passage of the landmark Maternity Benefits Act 1961 by the Indian parliament, which mandates 26 weeks of paid leave for mothers as against the existing 12, has generated more heartburn than hurrahs due to its skewed nature. The law will also facilitate ‘work from...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Almost a quarter of India’s 370,000 beggars are Muslims, newly released data from the 2011 Census show, reinforcing that the community still lags behind on most counts despite the country’s rapid economic growth. Muslims, the largest minority who make up 14.2% of India’s 1.25-billion population, come out pretty much at the bottom of most socio-economic indices, even a decade after a high-level government probe into their historical disadvantages...

-TheGuardian.com Hardworking women in India care for family members, cook, clean, garden, sew and farm without getting paid. When will official statistics recognise this? Women’s participation in work is an indicator of their status in a society. Paid work offers more opportunities for women’s agency, mobility and empowerment, and it usually leads to greater social recognition of the work that women do, whether paid or unpaid. Where women’s work participation rates are relatively...

-The Times of India New Delhi: Tamil Nadu has taken the lead in skill training of urban poor in the past two years, followed by Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal. The southern state has also left others far behind in providing financial assistance for setting up individual and group enterprises besides forming maximum number of self-help groups. According to a release of housing and poverty alleviation ministry, 4.54 lakh urban poor have...