-The Telegraph Mamata Banerjee today met Irom Sharmila Chanu, who has spent 11 years fasting to force Delhi to lift the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from Manipur, and expressed “appreciation” for her protest. “Only appreciation?” asked Sharmila, who is being kept alive on a forced diet of liquid Nutrition, inserted through a nasal pipe. At an election rally later, Mamata termed the army act a “draconian law” that should have long been...

Two central ministries have locked horns over the country’s youngest students, the tug-of-war for the tiny tots unfolding after a plan to bring pre-school education under the Right to Education Act. While the human resource development ministry wants to include pre-primary education under the act, which provides for free and compulsory education to children between six and 14, the women and child development department says education and childcare shouldn’t be segregated...

-The Hindu   The second “national convention on children's right to food” concluded here on Sunday with a call to link anti-malNutrition strategies to inflationary indices. The three-day convention in which about 1,000 delegates from 21 States participated, adopted a 25-point “charter” on combating malNutrition. Shanta Sinha, chairperson of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), stressed on focussing on the disadvantaged sections in the fight against malNutrition. Blaming the Central and...

-The Hindu   Convention suggests steps to combat malNutrition   The second “national convention on children's right to food” concluded here on Sunday with a call to link anti-malNutrition strategies to inflationary indices. The three-day convention in which about 1,000 delegates from 21 States participated, adopted a 25-point “charter” on combating malNutrition. Shanta Sinha, chairperson of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), stressed on focussing on the disadvantaged sections in the...

India's economic growth has added over seven million new jobs every year for almost a quarter of a century. Workers have seen their wages - adjusted for prices - rise by nearly 3% a year. Poverty rates among wage workers and the self-employed have fallen. Going forward, with swelling numbers of new entrants - and more women entering the job market , as was the case during east Asia's rapid...