-Down to Earth   The Badaun rape incident shows how vulnerable women are to sexual violence when there are no toilets in homes The shocking incident of gang rape and murder of two minor girls in Uttar Pradesh's Badaun district has drawn horrified reactions from leaders across the world. While most of the media attention has been on the apathy and insensitivity shown by the Akhilesh Yadav government and the police force, what...

-The Hindu   Banana is cultivated in Erode district all through the year. Every year, after the plant bears fruits the main stem (called pseudo stem) needs to be removed, since the main plant starts to wither and the crop continues to grow through offshoots for two or more years. Normally farmers employ Labour to either cut or uproot the pseudo stems and throw them by the roadside. For this, a farmer needs...

-The Hindu   The World of Work Report 2014 catalogues the impressive strides developing countries are making to catch up with advanced nations. But the International Labour Organisation study also contains important caveats on the cost from continuing sharp inequalities. Per capita income has grown on average by 3.3 per cent per annum in 140 countries over the past three decades, as against 1.8 per cent in the advanced economies. But this...

-The Business Standard     They were unimpressed by the UPA's misguided socialism, but they worry about the new regime's free-market orientation too Consider this paradox. The Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was decimated in the elections in spite of several years of good monsoon and rising agricultural production. Consider another paradox. This was the regime that implemented policies that were presumed to be pro-farmer: the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the...

The state of Punjab, earlier regarded as an agriculturally developed region of India, has been passing through a severe economic crisis. The capital-intensive mode of production, propagated by the green revolution in the mid-1960s is turning out to be non-viable for the small peasantry and hence, they are being involuntarily manoeuvered towards shifting away from farming. Based on a field study in Punjab during the year 2012-13, it was observed...