-The Hindu Kota, Rajasthan: The sun is about to set over grey-brown slabs in sandstone quarries in Kota district, Rajasthan. Babulal Khairwa sits at the edge of a quarry and attentively hits a taanki, a chisel shaped like a gigantic nail, placed on the stone with a hammer. Babulal hits the stone with the hammer till it cracks in a straight line. Each 2 by 10 square feet foot slab, or...

-IANS Banking services were paralysed, coal production came to a halt, and transportation was hit in Andhra Pradesh by the two-day nation-wide strike called by major trade unions, which began Wednesday. Bank services in Hyderabad and the rest of the state were totally paralysed as over 70,000 employees of public sector banks joined the strike. Coal production came to a halt in the mines of the state-owned Singareni Collieries, with 65,000 workers in...

-Outlook Lucknow: Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia today said the 12th Five Year Plan lays emphasis not merely on economic development but on inclusive growth to bring more poor and marginal people under its ambit. "The one point that I find reading the newspapers talking about the economic development is that there is a tendency to think that economic growth is a very narrow objective," Ahluwalia said while addressing the...

-The Times of India To remove various disadvantages that women face in India, the Union government introduced Gender Responsive Budgeting (or Gender Budgeting) in 2005-06. It meant that high-flying promises on empowering women were to be backed by financial outlays and that a gender perspective was to imbue all policy making. It was always a tough call - from the home, to the workplace and generally in society women are treated like...

-Outlook Production at leading automobile companies in the Gurgaon-Manesar belt, including Maruti Suzuki, Hero MotoCorp and Suzuki Motorcycle India, will be hit tomorrow as workers have decided to stay away from work in support of the two-day strike called by central trade unions than began today. "We had a meeting with representatives of different unions in the region and we have agreed to go on a one-day strike tomorrow in support of...