South Asia may boast a number of women leaders and be home to cultures that revere motherhood and worship female deities, but many women live with the threat of appalling violence and without many basic rights. From forced marriages in Afghanistan and "honor killings" in Pakistan to foeticide in India and trafficking in Nepal, South Asian women face a barrage of dangers, experts say, but add growing awareness, better laws and...

Are the well-heeled denizens of the island city more prejudiced against the girl child than those living in the suburbs The Census 2011 data on the dropping child sex ratio across Mumbai seems to suggest so. The island citys child sex ratio fell from 922 girls for every 1,000 boys in 2001 to 874 girls for every 1,000 boys in 2011.In contrast,the child sex ratio in the suburbs slipped from 923...

Cash transfers are now suggested by many as a silver bullet for addressing the problems that plague India’s anti-poverty programmes. This article argues instead for evidence-based policy and informed public debate to clarify the place, prospects and problems of cash transfers in India. By drawing on key empirical findings from academic and grey literature across the world an attempt is made to draw attention to three aspects of cash transfers...

The steadily rising rate of economic growth in India has recently been around 8 percent per year (it is expected to be 9 percent this year), and there is much speculation about whether and when India may catch up with and surpass China’s over 10 percent growth rate. Despite the evident excitement that this subject seems to cause in India and abroad, it is surely rather silly to be obsessed...

For most people in cities, Labour Day (or May Day, which was on May 1) was just another public holiday that nobody thought too much about. On a day marked to give voice to the rights of the Indian work force, perhaps one ought to consider those who have been forced to join their ranks too soon - child labourers. According to government estimates, an astounding 42.02% of the Indian workforce...