Though Palakkad district in Kerala, where the Coca Cola plant is situated is considered as the ‘rice bowl of Kerala’, a part of the district falling in the rain shadow region of the Western Ghats is drought prone. Plachimada, where the Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Private Limited (HCBPL) factory was set up had been classified ‘arable’. The villagers are predominantly landless agricultural labourers with almost 80 percent of the population...

Despite signs of progress in gender equality over the past 15 years, there is still a significant gap between women and men in terms of job opportunities and quality of employment, according to a new report by the International Labour Office of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). The report, ‘Women in labour markets: Measuring progress and identifying challenges,' says that more than a decade after the Fourth World Conference on Women...

Killed, aborted or neglected, at least 100m girls have disappeared—and the number is rising IMAGINE you are one half of a young couple expecting your first child in a fast-growing, poor country. You are part of the new middle class; your income is rising; you want a small family. But traditional mores hold sway around you, most important in the preference for sons over daughters. Perhaps hard physical labour is still...

Technology is helping public sector banks find customers in rural India. This is part of the Centre’s efforts to include villages in the organized financial system; to ensure they are not cheated of their wages. Pilots show promise   The current state of rural banking in the country is poor. A recent report, by the National Sample Survey Organization, revealed that 51.4 per cent of the 89.3 million total farmer households in...

Nearly 2 lakh farmers committed suicide in India since 1997. The share of big five states accounted for 1,22,823 suicides in this 12 year period. The data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau points out that 16,196 farmers in India ended their life in 2008. K Nagaraj, an economist, in his report Farmers' suicides in India: Magnitude, Trends and Spatial Patterns, says, "The title to land was taken as the...