In a small pastoral vand (hamlet) in Kutch, Gujarat, 10 year old Ramu wakes up at five in the morning. His mother serves him a hasty breakfast of bajra rotis after which he is packed off to the pasturelands surrounding their small hamlet to graze the family's buffaloes. Since his village does not have a working school, grazing the livestock is gainful employment from the point of view of Ramu's...

A new United Nations report shows for the first time how poor health is linked to poverty in cities and calls on policymakers to identify those that need the most help and target measures to improve their well-being. The report, entitled “Hidden Cities: unmasking and overcoming health inequities in urban settings,” was launched today in Kobe, Japan, where leaders from governments, academia, media and non-governmental organizations have been meeting for the...

Unique features of the public wage programme turn it into a magnet for women More women than men work under the national programme that guarantees employment to rural people. In the current fiscal till October, women availed of more than 50 per cent of employment created under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Their participation has been growing since the inception of the Act in 2006. This is...

Four years ago, the National Commission for Women (NCW) and its Delhi chapter (DCW) had sought an answer from the Supreme Court as to what should be the age of marriage for a girl, given the different figures given in various laws and the resultant confusion. On Tuesday, counsel for the commission Aparna Bhat pointed out that despite the lapse of a long time, the Centre has not yet filed its...

The famous carpet belt of Bhadohi-Mirzapur had been freed from child labour, claimed minister of state for textiles Panabaka Lakshmi and textile secretary Rita Menon. They were in the city on Friday to take part in the inaugural function of the four-day India Carpet Expo, being organised in the premises of the Sampurnanand Sanskrit University. In a chat with reporters, the minister said no child labour was engaged in the carpet...