-The Business Standard Madhav Gadgil headed the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel set up by the ministry of environment and forests in 2010. The report zoned 75 per cent of the Western Ghats into different grades of ecological sensitivity. The recommendation was to protect these zones with measures by phasing out mining and introducing organic farming and eco-friendly urbanisation. The report also proposed a development model executed in consultation with the...

-The Hindu Though there are improvements in employment and labour conditions on the work floor and in workers’ hostels in textile mills and garment factories in the State, “major labour abuses continue to occur,” according to the latest report by non-government watchdogs. The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) published a report, ‘Captured by cotton’, in May 2011 on the exploitation of Dalit...

-Kafila.org Almost a century ago, Katherine Mayo published a book titled ‘Mother India’ that criticized the Indian way of living, and Rudyard Kipling  spoke of the ‘White Man’s Burden’. These writings reflected the colonial perspective that what colonizers did was in the best interest of the colonized people. Consequently, most well-meaning citizens of colonial powers were alienated from the horrible plight of the colonized. Purpose well served – unopposed exploitation. Years later,...

-The Telegraph A US government report has painted a gloomy picture of human trafficking in the Northeast. The US state department’s 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report, released by secretary of state Hillary Clinton yesterday, said there had been a rise in women from the region being subjected to “servile marriages” in states with low female-to-male child sex ratios such as Haryana and Punjab. According to the report, girls from the Northeast are also...

-The Hindustan Times Human migration is as old as civilisation itself but the magnitude and heterogeneity of migration have seen a phenomenal rise in the last two decades. This story of human populations moving from one end of the world to the other has another leitmotif today: a spurt in migration of women workers.    According to a new report - Migration of Women Workers from South Asia to the Gulf - Indian...