-PTI NEW DELHI: Various rights groups have urged the government to hold a public consultation on the proposed amendments to the Child Labour Bill, which they warned will end up legitimizing economic exploitation of children and rob them of their childhood. They have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a public consultation on the amendments and called for the removal of the provision seeking to legitimise use of children under 14...

-PTI Kolkata: With child labour decreasing at a dismal rate of only 2.2 per cent per year, it would take more than a century to end the menace, a report said on Thursday. An analysis of census data by non-governmental organisation CRY (Child Rights and You) has revealed that child labour has been decreasing at a mere 2.2 per cent per year over the last decade, contrary to popular perception of its...

-The Hindu The Modi government is determined to dismantle the two-pronged welfare paradigm. It is now an established fact that one area where the Narendra Modi administration has acted with a sense of purpose, urgency and resolve is in slashing social expenditure. Be it education, health, agriculture, livelihood security, food security, panchayati raj institutions, drinking water or the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes sub-plan, central government funds earmarked for social protection have been cut. The...

-The Hindu The growth-at-all-cost mantra has left a vast majority of people impoverished. If the first year of the BJP government is any indication, its five-year stint may turn out to be the worst period for India’s environment and ecosystem-dependent people since the 1980s. This is saying a lot, given that none of the previous governments has been particularly sensitive to issues of fresh air and water, productive soil, healthy forests and grasslands....

-Hindustan Times A dominant feature of the first year of Narendra Modi's leadership is the quiet dismantling of India's imperfectly realised framework of welfare and rights, covertly, by stealth.   A declared pro-corporate agenda, such as the land acquisition ordinance, proved politically messy and costly. Therefore, the government resorted instead for an enfeebling of the welfare architecture of the country through a combination of fiscal withdrawals, ignoring even legally mandated obligations.   But this attracted...