-Pratirodh.com The streets of the obscure town of Pandharkawda in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra have come to life. Hundreds of villagers crowd them for the weekly haat to buy their supplies of vegetables, spices, pulses and tobacco, while farmers throng shops selling seeds, pesticides, manure and farm commodities. Dressed in bright cotton sarees, women haggle with vendors. Even doctors, especially dentists, are having a busy day with long queues of patients...

-The New York Times ASHULIA, BANGLADESH: The fire alarm shattered the monotony of the Tazreen Fashions factory. Hundreds of seamstresses looked up from their machines, startled. On the third floor, Shima Akhter Pakhi had been stitching hoods onto fleece jackets. Now she ran to a staircase. But two managers were blocking the way. Ignore the alarm, they ordered. It was just a test. Back to work. A few women laughed nervously. Ms....

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The EPFO (Employees' Provident Fund Organization), which manages lifetime savings of 6.15 crore individuals, has just made life tougher for workers. Employees will now have to prove that their employers deducted the statutory dues while giving them salaries, a move that will further benefit construction companies and contractors in particular who often claim that they have paid salaries to thousands of workers without actually transferring...

-The Hindustan Times Indians love slogans. So, since Independence, successive governments have offered catch lines to their electorates. Some slogans were inopportune because they were of dubious accuracy. Jawaharlal Nehru’s 1950s ‘Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai’ — Indians and Chinese are brothers — (even Nehru did not believe this), led to a battlefield defeat. The Congress’ 1975 Emergency-era ‘Indira is India and India is Indira’ and the BJP’s 2004 ‘India Shining’ were electoral disasters. Some...

-The Hindu Sunita Devi couldn’t take her Class IX final exams because the date clashed with the day of her marriage. Nine years on, she has not completed her degree course, but teaches other Dalit women who couldn’t continue their studies after marriage. The resident of Baghpat in western Uttar Pradesh was recounting her story to a large number of Dalit women who gathered here on Tuesday as part of the first...