Development models that focus attention on the poor while expanding job opportunities, increased government spending on social services and aid flows from affluent nations are all successful strategies for alleviating global poverty, the United Nations says. Access to low carbon energy and mobilizing domestic capital by, for example, improving tax collection, are the other factors the UN Development Programme (UNDP) identifies in a new report as crucial factors for the...

The government would soon announce a National Employment Policy (NEP), and with this, employment creation would be mainstreamed into all macroeconomic decision-making, Union Labour and Employment Minister Mallikarjun Kharge has said. The Minister was addressing the recent 99th session of the International Labour Conference, held under the auspices of the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Mr. Kharge said the NEP would provide a holistic framework towards achieving the goal of remunerative and decent...

In the absence of whole-hearted steps to implement the provisions effectively, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005 is falling short of expectations.  The Delhi High Court ruled recently that a woman can also be held liable under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act 2005. This the court did on the basis of the interpretation that ‘relatives' included not only male but also female members of...

The Janani Suraksha Yojana, a path-breaking conditional cash transfer initiative launched in 2005 to encourage deliveries at government health care facilities, has achieved some of its goals. It was launched at a time when India accounted for 20 per cent of maternal and 31 per cent of neonatal deaths in the world. Benefits started accruing a year after the scheme came into operation — the number of deliveries in government...

Umesh Kumar and his wife Satvati Devi were woken in the middle of the night by loud cries coming from the neighbouring house. "She was crying loudly. She was pleading, 'Kill me, but please don't hurt him.' She loved him and they wanted to get married," Ms Devi tells me. Two days after teenage lovers Asha and Yogesh were brutally killed, Swaroop Nagar colony on the north-western outskirts of the...