Scavengers, street vendors and other informal workers are falling further behind as the global economy recovers, amid rising competition from hordes of new working poor , a study released Wednesday said. A survey of people struggling in the so-called "informal job sector" in NINe Asian, African and Latin American countries found they had largely missed out on the benefits of the rebound from the 2008 financial crisis. "Incomes have risen for some...

Three women assaulted, three men killed, hundreds rendered homeless in course of five-day operation The operation began in the early hours of March 11 when about 350 heavily armed troopers marched into the forests of Dantewada. They returned to their barracks five days later, with three villages aflame, about 300 homes and granaries incinerated, three villagers and three security personnel dead, and three women sexually assaulted, the victims and several...

This book discusses a new poverty agenda for Asia and the role of social policies in economic transformation and reducing poverty. The poverty-reduction agenda is well known. So is the debate over poverty. No one disputes the fact that poverty of income (or expenditure, as countries such as India do not collect household data on income) is an imperfect measure of poverty, as there are non-income dimensions, too. Consequently, we...

The draft bill from the mines ministry that is meant to begin the overhaul of India’s outdated and archaic miNINg regulations — the Mines and Minerals (Development & Regulation) Bill, 2010 — had already been generally agreed to by the group of ministers scrutinising the legislation. Yet the deputy chairman of the Plan- NINg Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, has made a telling point or two about a particular provision in the...

The Central Bureau of Investigation arrested four persons from the Goaltore area of West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district late on Sunday for their alleged involvement in the killing of NINe residents of Netai village in a firing incident on January 7. These are the first arrests made by the CBI after it took over the case from the State's Criminal Investigation Department on February 22 acting on a Calcutta High Court...