-Newsclick.in As a result of the strike almost 1,29,500 Branch Post offices have been reported as closed on May 22. In an unprecedented show of courage and unity, nearly three lakh Gramin Dak Sevak (GDS) employees of the Postal Department went on an indefinite strike on May 22. Their grievances - long pending demands of the Gramin Dak Sevaks for regularization as government employees and the ill-implementation of the recommendations of Kamalesh Chandra...

-The Indian Express Women form 80 per cent of urban migrants, but public policy is blind to their concerns. A recent UN report says India is on the “brink of an urban revolution”, as its population in towns and cities are expected to reach 600 million by 2031. Fuelled by migration, megacities of India (Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata) will be among the largest urban concentrations in the world. Interestingly, the 2011 Census...

-TheWire.in A new UN study also notes that the intersection of gender with other forms of discrimination – caste, race/ethnicity, religion etc – is what further marginalises women and girls from poor and deprived sections of the society. New Delhi: Not only are women poorer, more hungry and more discriminated against than men in India, but the average Dalit woman in the country also dies 14.6 years younger than those from higher...

-TheWire.in Earning less than a living wage, migrant workers resort to living in the open, in shared and cramped rented rooms, or within the workplace. The Union Budget, announced on February 1, has committed to provide assistance for building 3.7 million houses in urban areas in 2018-19 under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY). However, this does little to resolve India’s urban housing crisis, which affects the poorest and most marginalised populations...

-TheWire.in The Modi government’s attempts to reshape the economy lie entirely in the financial realm; they come on the back of concerted efforts to strip workers of legal protection in not just the informal sector, but also the formal. The Narendra Modi government has made two major interventions in the economic sphere, demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST), with the ostensible aim of expanding the formal sector at the expense...