-Economic and Political Weekly The platform known as the JAM Trinity (an acronym for Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and mobile numbers) may enable a shift from the current Public Distribution System, based on price subsidies, to the direct transfer of benefits. However, it is incorrect to argue that JAM technologies will necessarily lead to the deMISe of the PDS. State-level experiences of computerisation, recounted here, reveal that the same technologies can...

-The Times of India Businessman Rajesh Varkharia thought he was waging a lonely legal battle till a chance meeting with two other dowry accused at the Bangalore trial court. "I was totally in the dark. I would just sign where the lawyer asked me to," he says, describing his five days in prison as an accused under the section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, the dowry harassment act. Varkharia and three others...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A survey of Muslim women—victims of triple talaq-- found that 6 out of 10 women were given divorce unilaterally by their husbands. In almost all other cases the divorce was one-sided with the woman informed about it by her relatives, the local Qazi or through sms or e-mail. An earlier study by the NGO Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA) had found that 92% of Muslim women...

-The Indian Express My mother does not work”. In country after country, this expression is heard each time someone describes a woman not engaged in paid employment. A recent study by McKinsey, titled “The Power of Parity: How equality for women could drive $ 2 trillion in global growth”, has evidence that every “stay-at-home” woman directly damages a country’s GDP by billions. Its message is that every woman should “work”; India’s...

-Hindustan Times Chandigarh/Patiala: After a bumper paddy crop, the fields are on fire in Punjab and Haryana, polluting the air with hazardous particles. Strangely, there wasn’t much hue and cry till a thick blanket of smog — a mixture of smoke and fog — enveloped Delhi, making city residents breathless. It’s the farmers of the two food-bowl states who are being blamed for the sudden deterioration in air quality and smog in...