-IPS News Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin is the Executive Director of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund UNITED NATIONS: The tragic deaths and injuries of women following sterilisation in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh have sparked global media coverage and public concern and outrage. Now we must ensure that such a tragedy never occurs again. The women underwent surgery went with the best intentions - hoping they were doing the right thing for themselves and...

-Economic and Political Weekly The current regime seeks to reform labour laws with the understanding that these reforms will improve industrial growth and expand the possibilities of enterprise. However, there is already ample evidence from within India that this obsession with reforming labour law, particularly in the way the government has done it till now, will not take us any closer in creating more jobs or a healthy industrial sector. These...

-The Hindustan Times Raipur (Chhattisgarh): Eleven women have died and dozens more are in a critical condition after a government-run sterilisation programme in Chhattisgarh designed to control the country's billion-plus population went wrong, officials said on Tuesday. More than 50 women are seriously ill after suffering complications from the surgery in Bilaspur district over the weekend, authorities in Chhattisgarh said. "Reports of a drop in pulse, vomiting and other ailments started...

-The Telegraph The National Democratic Alliance government is planning to scrap the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The chief minister of Rajasthan, Vasundhara Raje, had already asked for the employment programme of the MGNREGA under which the state was obliged to provide employment on demand (failing which an unemployment allowance of a specified amount had to be paid), to be downgraded to a mere "food-for-work" programme, where the state...

-Deccan Herald In accordance with a new agroecology initiative within the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, by using the agroecological methods, small farmers are key to feeding the world, Nafeez Ahmed notes. Modern industrial agricultural methods can no longer feed the world, due to the impacts of overlapping environmental and ecological crises linked to land, water and resource availability. The stark warning comes from the new United Nations Special Rapporteur on the...