-The Indian Express The objective is to ensure that a standard minimum wage rate exists for all kinds of occupations. The government is seeking to significantly boost incomes of the country’s lowest paid workers by substantially raising the minimum wages payable to them, mandating payments through formal banking channels and ensuring they get social security benefits like provident fund and medical insurance. Fresh amendments are being readied to incorporate these changes to...

-The Indian Express 4.56 lakh girls were missing on average every year for the period 2001-12. The reason is sex-selective abortions, which though declining in number, continues in the country. Pune: Around 2.9 lakh girls were missing at birth due to sex selection in 2012, lower than the annual average of 3.3 lakh for the period 2007-12, according to data compiled under the Sample Registration System (SRS) and released by the...

-The Times of India PUNE: The water situation is grim as the total storage in 91 main reservoirs across the country has gone below the last 10-year average, says the report of the Central Water Commission (CWC). The reservoirs currently hold 91 billion cubic metre (BCM) water, which is 58% of their total live storage capacity. During the same period last year, these reservoirs had 103.5 BCM water. The current storage is...

-Economic and Political Weekly While insufficient sanitation facilities often get represented in statistics and are reported in the literature on urban infrastructure planning and contested urban spaces, what is often left out is the everyday practice and experience of going to dysfunctional toilets, particularly by women. By analysing the practices and problems associated with toilet use from a phenomenological perspective, this article aims to situate the issue in the everyday lives...

-Livemint.com BJP’s U-turn on the proposed land Act reflects a re-balancing of deeper political forces that are at work in India’s political economy The recent U-turn by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government on the proposed amendment to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (henceforth the land Act), can be viewed narrowly as a Congress victory in the ongoing tit-for-tat game that is short-changing...