Bihar has been in the news recently for recording an average growth rate of 11.3 per cent for the period between 2004 and 2009. Much has been written about the quality of governance and the improved state of roads. This is indeed commendable, and no mean achievement, for a State that had virtually become a “development outcast”. I was pleasantly surprised to note on a recent trip to Bihar the...
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Politics of Disability Estimates in India: A Research Note by Vikash Kumar
Introduction The phenomenon of disability is one of the pressing problems in the world. According to the projections of international agencies, about 10 per cent of the population are affected with physical, mental, sensory and other forms of impairments and around 75 per cent of the disabled population are concentrated in the rural and inaccessible areas of the developing societies. This data is based on recent studies carried out in various...
More »Bill for 50% women’s quota in panchayats introduced
A Bill to amend Article 243 D of the Constitution and thus increase reservation for women from one-third to not less than half of the seats in panchayats was introduced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday. The Bill is also aimed at increasing reservation for women in the post of Chairperson and in the seats reserved for the Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes across three tiers (village panchayat, panchayat union and...
More »Maternal tragedies by TK Rajalakshmi
A Human Rights Watch report emphasises the need for a system of recording and investigating all maternal deaths. THE maternal mortality ratio (MMR) is calculated by the number of maternal deaths for every 100,000 births. Consider this: In 2005, India’s MMR was 16 times that of Russia, 10 times that of China and four times higher than that in Brazil. Why should there be such high maternal mortality rates in...
More »Lack of transparency and debate in India-EU free trade agreement by Meena Menon
Seven rounds of trade talks between the EU and India have been concluded without any negotiating texts or positions of either party being made public. The widespread optimism about the possible signing of the India-European Union (EU) Free Trade Agreement (FTA) sometime in 2010 fails to take into account the many thorny issues that remain to be resolved. Not the least of them are the tariff negotiations on goods and...
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