-Firstpost.com/ IndiaSpend Delhi/ Gurgaon: Underneath two gigantic chandeliers in the conference room of a posh Gurugram hotel, 250 elegantly dressed women are ferociously beating drums. Faster, slower, louder, stop. It’s easier than it looks. The women break out into a sweat as they whistle and shout hoi in unison, on cue. The idea of this 45-minute exercise, said Blesson Joseph of team-building company Dfrens, is to demonstrate the power of cooperation. “If...

-howindialives.com/ Livemint.com The recent protests by the Marathas might have roots in the declining returns from farming across Maharashtra between 2006-07 and 2014-15 Falling farm incomes in rural Maharashtra might be an important factor fuelling the current spate of protests by the Marathas, who are demanding reservation in educational institutions and government jobs. The net returns from farming, or wholesale prices minus costs of production, declined for most of the major crops...

-Newsclick.in By all accepted standards, the official minimum wages in states are just enough to keep the worker alive. What they actually get is even less. Minimum wages of industrial workers in India are less than half of what a justifiable calculation – based on minimum calorific intake and the barest minimum of other expenses – suggests. While the central govt. using a well-accepted standard formula provides Rs.18,000 per month to its...

-Frontline.in A DETAILED report brought out recently by the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi Institute, titled “Primary Education in West Bengal: The Scope for Change”, highlights certain major problems that are coming in the way of the proper functioning of the primary education system in the State. While acknowledging that access to primary education has increased significantly and that there has been a perceptible improvement in the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR), the...

-TheWire.in Mexican economist David Barkin on India's neoliberal economics, growing inequalities, agrarian distress and more. David Barkin is Professor of Economics at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. He received his doctorate in economics from Yale University and was awarded the National Prize in Political Economics in 1979 for his analysis of inflation in Mexico. His research has focused on the development of an alternative to the capitalist economic model. In an...