-The Week Manorama Online Broken hearts float down the Bhakra Main Line canal. Broken by the endless struggle with the land, with the weather, with the creditor. Broken by broken promises, broken by the honour they lost, broken enough to kill themselves. And, at the sluice gate at Khanauri village they slow down, looking up with unseeing eyes. And, from the bridge across the canal, the beating hearts they broke look...

-The Hindu Business Line The national sample survey shows there has been a substantial shift from paid or recognised work to unpaid domestic activities for both rural and urban women There has been much discussion on the evidence from recent NSS large sample surveys on employment, of the significant decline in women's workforce participation rates. Various explanations have been offered for this, including rising real wages that have allowed women in poor households...

-The Times of India More than three quarters of schools in the country do not have fully equipped science laboratories for students in class 11 and 12, a survey of 2.4 lakh secondary and senior secondary schools has found. For classes 9 and 10, where an integrated science module is taught to students, over 58% schools don't have the requisite lab. "This is an atrocious state of affairs," says a sad Professor...

-Economic and Political Weekly   The emphasis on use of digital technologies to bridge the "rural-urban gap" in the union budget is limited to high talk and minimal allocations. The need for a more comprehensive and peoples' participation-oriented rural action plan should have been the focus while setting sectoral allocations, but that is not to be in this mid-year budget. Vipul Mudgal (vipulmudgal@gmail.com) heads the Inclusive Media for Change project at the Centre...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: India continues to lag on human development indicators in spite of a slew of welfare programmes, with a UNDP report released today ranking it 135th among 187 countries that were judged on progress in areas such as life expectancy, education, income and employment.   Analysts blame India's poor performance on lack of accountability in implementation of the welfare programmes. Former National Advisory Council member N.C. Saxena said state governments...