-Deccan Herald Bangalore: While 42 children of ragpickers in Pune are all set to begin a promising academic year under the provisions of the Right To Education Act, domestic workers in Bangalore are waking up to the potential of the provisions to provide better education to their children.    This is mainly due to lack of awareness, according to Domestic Workers Rights Union (DWRM) that comprises nearly 2,200 domestic workers spread across...

-PTI The government auditor CAG has found irregularities in disbursement of funds under the Rs 52,000-crore farm debt waiver scheme, 2008, as benefits have been taken by some ineligible farmers. Taking note of the the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Performance Audit of the Agricultural Debt Waiver and Debt Relief Scheme (ADWDRS) 2008, RBI has asked the banks to recover money from ineligible beneficiaries. It has also advised the banks to lodge FIRs...

-Open Democracy Were Ram Singh and his cohort simply claiming a notion of masculinity promoted every day by their role models in politics, business and the media? Ruchira Gupta writes of the steady creeping of a rape culture into the fabric of India, and what needs to be done to counter the idea that women are commodities Let us talk about Ram Singh, the chief rapist accused in the case of Damini,...

-The Times of India BHOPAL/JABALPUR: The Madhya Pradesh government is compiling a list of convicted sexual offenders to ensure that they do not get government jobs as part of a series of measures to check crimes against women in the state. A government spokesperson said a DSP rank officer will be appointed in each district to check such crimes and that charge-sheets in these cases will be filed within two weeks. There has...

-Economic and Political Weekly The recent debate on the acceptability of foreign direct investment in the retail sector in India has been mostly political. It is necessary to look into the pros and cons of FDI in retail from a purely economic point of view. This article identifi es the safeguards that should be undertaken before allowing giant multinationals to function in the country. Abhirup Sarkar (abhirup@isical.ac.in) is with the Indian Statistical...