-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Centre has nudged schools and colleges to appoint student gender monitors who will report any incident of gender bias or sexual harassment on the campus to designated teachers. Although the government has dubbed the measure an "outreach for creating an environment that fosters equal treatment", social activists said a sensitisation programme would have worked better than a system that will only create snitches. According to government guidelines issued...

-The Indian Express Estimates based on SECC and NSS data have different purposes. Recently, the government released data from the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) 2011. There has been comment that hereafter, we need not have consumption-based poverty estimates using NSS (National Sample Surveys) data. It is thought that SECC data will alone be enough to estimate poverty and deprivation. Here, we briefly examine the differences between the two and clarify that...

There is a class angle to farmers' suicide in India. Close to three-quarter of farmers who committed suicide in 2014 were small and marginal farmers. ‘Bankruptcy or indebtedness’ accounted for one-fifth of total farmers’ suicide during 2014. The report entitled Accidental Deaths & Suicides in India 2014 by the National Crime Records Bureau of Ministry of Home Affairs clarifies the doubt that indebtedness and bankruptcy were major causes of farmers' suicide,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Prospective parents looking to adopt MIGht in future have to choose the child they want as their own by going through photographs, with the government planning to end the practice of allowing them to meet several children before they take one home. Under existing rules, prospective parents can meet at least three children - referred by an adoption agency - before they take a decision. Draft guidelines the women...

-Business Standard The author visits the ghost villages of Uttarakhand and finds out what is prompting people to leave Seven kilometres ahead of Kanatal in the Tehri district, three large boards announce that a slip road is being built under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana. This narrow road leads to Saur, once a bustling village but now eerily silent and desolate. Roofs have caved in and weeds have taken over untended...