-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...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Access to education beyond higher secondary schooling is a mere 10% among the university-age population in India. This is the finding of a report "Intergenerational and Regional Differentials in Higher Education in India" authored by development economist, Abusaleh Shariff of the Delhi-based Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy and Amit Sharma, research analyst of the National Council of Applied Economic Research. The report...

-The Hindustan Times   The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notices to the secretary, Union ministry of rural development, and chief secretaries of seven states on the basis of an HT investigation which revealed that poor labourers were committing suicide due to delayed payments under MGNREGA. NHRC has asked for reports from the state governments and the ministry of rural development within six weeks. MGNREGA is the UPA's flagship scheme that...

-The Indian Express Agricultural GDP is underestimated due to inaccurate non-cereal data. It started with a mundane question: what is the chicken population in India? There are glaring inconsistencies in the available data. The National Sample Survey Organisation's (NSSO's) surveys show a 20 per cent annual growth of chicken consumption between 2005 and 2010. But according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the production of chicken meat only rose 10 per...

-Live Mint The Indian state has done little to provide preventive public health services New data released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) have once again underlined the abysmal state of sanitation in the country, particularly in rural India where two-thirds of the country lives. Only 32% of rural households have their own toilets, according to the recently released results of a large-scale survey conducted by NSSO in 2012. An additional...