-The Hindu Business Line By allowing children to work in Family enterprises, amendments to the Child Labour Act have made them more vulnerable to exploitation. Tracking the issue will be more difficult, writes Preeti Mehra When the two houses of Parliament put their stamp on a few amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986 a couple of months ago, they also signed away the dignity of children and the...

-The Indian Express Decentralised industrialisation, entrepreneurship from below have been absent in states that have seen recent unrest among agrarian communities. “The soil here is very saline with electrical conductivity value of 9. We can grow only chloride-loving crops like coconut and the MR-2 variety of mulberry.” That was Tamil Selvi, recently telling this correspondent about the 5.75-acre land farmed by her father Natarajan Gounder at Velayuthagoundanpudur, a small village around 25...

-The Hindu The amendments to the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, passed by Parliament recently, demonstrate a lack of national commitment to abolishing all forms of child labour. Instead of attempting an overhaul of legislation that has proved ineffective in curbing the phenomenon, Parliament has allowed children up to the age of 14 to be employed in ‘Family enterprises’, and created a new category of ‘adolescents’ (the 14-18 age...

-Press Statement from Right to Education Forum Lok Sabha has passed today Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2012 and allowed work for children below the age of 14 years in Family enterprises is a regressive move. RTE Forum, a coalition of ten thousand grass-root organizations, people’s movement, educationists and teachers organizations, has said that  “Today is black day for the millions of Indian children; they will now be deprived...

-TheGuardian.com Hardworking women in India care for family members, cook, clean, garden, sew and farm without getting paid. When will official statistics recognise this? Women’s participation in work is an indicator of their status in a society. Paid work offers more opportunities for women’s agency, mobility and empowerment, and it usually leads to greater social recognition of the work that women do, whether paid or unpaid. Where women’s work participation rates are relatively...