-The Hindu     "Workers may take their families with them when they leave" BHUBANESWAR: The large-scale devastation caused by cyclone Phailin in Odisha's Ganjam district is expected to trigger ‘distress migration' of hordes of affected people to faraway places such as Chennai, Mumbai, Goa, Surat and Ahmedabad. Experts on migration and activists working on the ground warned that the flight of workers was imminent from Ganjam, which traditionally sends half a million migrant labourers...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: Over a third of the slum population in India lives without any basic facility being provided by the state as the slums are not recognized. In the case of some states like Rajasthan, Gujarat and Bihar, the entire slum population of several lakhs remains unrecognized by the state governments. For the first time, the census data on slums identified slum dwellers as the people living in compact...

-Press Information Bureau The India Rural Development Report 2012/13 was released here by Shri Jairam Ramesh, Minister for Rural Development, Government of India. The Report was prepared by IDFC Foundation in collaboration with network partners, the Centre for Economic and Social Studies (CESS), the Institute for Rural Management Anand (IRMA), and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), with contributions from several other researchers, experts and civil society organisations. On...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government is working on a new index based on the consumption pattern of rural landless labour to fix wages under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, a move that is set to result in slower annual wage hike increases under the government's flagship social welfare programme. Rural wages under MGNREGA are at present based on the consumer price index for agricultural labourers (CPI-AL), which...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: For the longest time, most calls that came to Childline would be from a kid on a railway platform asking for help after a brutal police beating or desperately looking for shelter. But the decline of public call offices (PCOs) across the country have led to a sharp drop in calls from marginalized children to India's first toll-free helpline for children in distress. The decline...