-The Hindu A mix of social constraints and dearth of employment opportunities has kept women out of the labour market, leading to a huge opportunity cost to the nation Women in India face enormous challenges for their participation in the economy — in a way that mirrors the many injustices they suffer in the society at large. The labour participation rate of women — that is, the number of women in the...

-Open Democracy Were Ram Singh and his cohort simply claiming a notion of masculinity promoted every day by their role models in politics, business and the media? Ruchira Gupta writes of the steady creeping of a rape culture into the fabric of India, and what needs to be done to counter the idea that women are commodities Let us talk about Ram Singh, the chief rapist accused in the case of Damini,...

-IANS Nearly 71 per cent of India's elderly aged between 60 to 80 years are compelled to work, said a survey conducted by United Nation Population Fund (UNFPA) India. The survey, partnered with many other organisations, noted that 71 per cent elderly work due to economic necessity and not by choice, and that there is a close link between current work participation and poverty and illiteracy. The survey was done in seven...

-The Hindu Kerala’s Kudumbashree network and the rural employment guarantee scheme have converged to provide a unique model of empowerment An incredible story of empowerment has been unfolding in the wake of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) programme in the State of Kerala. This is the story of how a socially engineered convergence of the scheme with panchayati raj institutions and the State sponsored community network of poor...

Remember Arjun Sengupta Committee Report? It’s the same report which put paid to government’s shifting poverty estimates by asserting that almost 80% Indian survive on less than Rs 20 per day. Known as the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), the report has gone missing from the public domain. The official website of NCEUS is no more working: http://nceus.gov.in, raising doubts regarding someone, somewhere trying to hide...