Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

The episodes of violence in land acquisition by the government, as witnessed recently in Bhatta-Parsaul in Uttar Pradesh and in other states earlier, occur because patterns of violence are inbuilt into the process. Despite a bill pending in Parliament since 2007, there has been little effort by political parties to evolve a consensus on acquisition of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. The law as at present and also the provisions...

-The Economic Times   Over half the country's workforce is self-employed and women receive less pay than men for similar jobs, latest government data shows. While 51% of the country's total workforce are self-employed, only 15.5% are regular wagers or salaried employees and 33.5% casual labourers, according to a survey by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), the key findings of which were released on Friday. The number of people selfemployed...

A thinking government, regional or central, would ensure sustainable wages for skilled artisans and help them market the handcrafted products, instead of letting them join the NREGS queue. The design and execution of the much-touted National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) are likely to leave a lasting impact on some areas of our economy. Surely, the prototype version did not foresee that it would act as a catalyst for changes that...

A recent study finds that selective abortion of girls, especially for pregnancies after a firstborn girl, has increased substantially in India. CENSUS 2011, which brought out several positive features with regard to education, literacy and fertility rates, also confirmed the disturbing trend that had been reported for the first time in the 1991 Census – the increasing gap between the figures for male and female children in the 0-6 age...