Though wages are not significantly high, West Asia continues to attract the poor looking for a break… In Benyamin's award-winning Malayalam novel   Aadu Jeevitham (A Sheep-like Life), based on a true life story, the protagonist, Najeeb, is held as a slave labourer on a sheep farm in a faraway desert in Saudi Arabia. For three years, he is forced to do back-breaking work, is kept half-hungry and is denied water to...

With 80 per cent of the world’s people lacking adequate social protection and global inequalities growing, top United Nations officials are calling for a new era of social justice that offers basic services, decently paid Jobs, and safeguards for the poor, vulnerable and marginalized. “Social justice is more than an ethical imperative; it is a foundation for national stability and global prosperity,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a message ahead of...

The Army suffers from acute gender bias to deny permanent commission to women officers who work shoulder to shoulder with male officers to assist and support troops in combat zones, Major Seema Singh has told the Supreme Court. "The policies for women in Army not only discriminate her against male officers but also lower her status to that of a jawan/junior commissioned officer, whom she has been leading for 14...

AEPC is keen on tapping the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. "We have written to the planning commission and the proposal is also with the textiles ministry," AEPC chairman Premal Udani said. Training in apparel making could be made part of  NREGS for which the industry could contribute Rs 50 per worker per day, initially. Once the worker is employed the industry would give an amount equivalent to the government's contribution...

The United Nations began laying the groundwork today for a global “social protection floor” that would guarantee food security, health services for all and old-age pensions, with a senior official stressing that all that is lacking is the political will for an initiative needing minimum investment. “Social security is a human right. We’ve forgotten that for a very long time, but roughly only 20 per cent of the global population has...