-Livemint.com Every time she felt her bladder was full, 12-year-old Madhuri Kumari left her classroom and ran to her nearby home to use the toilet. At her government-run school in Sangam Vihar, South Delhi, this was the norm for many students for years. The primary school with 1,300 boys and an equal number of girls had neither a toilet nor a drinking water facility. What was more embarrassing for the girl than...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A huge surge in public response has pushed the number of comments on the telecom department panel's net neutrality recommendations well past the 50,000 mark, with almost all seeking free and equal access to the web. At last count on Sunday, the responses to the report on the mygov.in portal were 52,172, a far cry from around 700 comments posted on August 14, and increasing by...

-Economic and Political Weekly Farmers' unions and political parties have been demanding the implementation of the Swaminathan minimum support price (cost plus 50%) to address agrarian crisis and farmers' distress. But they have not raised demands for the implementation of the recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers, which have the potential to provide lasting solutions. Ranjit Singh Ghuman (ghumanrs@yahoo.co.uk) is a Nehru SAIL Chair Professor, Centre for Research in Rural and...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The days of domestic helps, mostly women, toiling away for a pittance may soon be over with the government giving final touches to a national policy which will prescribe a minimum salary along with other benefits like compulsory paid leave every year and maternity leave. According to sources, the minimum salary could be pegged at Rs 9,000 per month while 15 days of paid leave a...

-The Hindu Business Line No crop diversification efforts will work so long as free electricity offsets the costs of pumping out groundwater Subsidies have for long been a necessary evil, a vote-bank silver bullet. But its relevance stands challenged in today’s increasingly market-oriented economic order. The recent US declaration of giving differential treatment to developing countries, with regard to farm subsidies, brings up the long standing issue of slashing subsidies that have...