-The Times of India There are now nearly 9 million fewer farmers than there were in 2001, the first time in four decades that the absolute number of cultivators has fallen. Census data released on Tuesday shows that while the proportion of cultivators to the total workforce has been falling steadily, this is the first time since 1971 that the number of cultivators has fallen in absolute terms. The office of the...

-The Times of India Some 20 months after hotly contesting data on UPA-1's "jobless growth", the government has admitted to lack of substantial increase in employment between 2004-05 and 2009-2010, with the self-employed workforce shrinking from 56.4% to 50.7% of the total workforce. In absolute numbers, the self-employed decreased from 258.4 million to 232.7 million in this period while regular salaried workers rose from 69.7 million to 75.1 million. The ranks of...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...

-The Hindustan Times Far from the neatly trimmed lawns of India Gate that so often reverberate with cries for justice, far also from the corridors of power where ministries recently squabbled over the right age for consensual sex, lie 197 districts - yes 197, read the figure again - where children are regularly abused. In these districts -- all ridden by conflict -- words like illegal detention, arbitrary arrests, sexual violence, torture...

-Live Mint Farmers resisting India's biggest FDI deal are paying a heavy price for their stand In June 2005, the Orissa government signed the country's biggest foreign direct investment deal yet with the South Korean steel manufacturer Posco for a $12 billion (around `65,856 crore) plant near Paradip in the mineral-rich state. Livelihoods in eight existing agricultural and fishing villages were to give way for the project that was intended to be...