The passport office in Hyderabad reported the highest number of passport applications recorded in Indian history (at least 450,000) and it expects an increase of 15-20% this year Jamuna Kunta sits stiffly in a plush red chair at the Hyderabad press club, holding her head proudly erect as she quietly recounts the events leading to her husband’s suicide in Dubai. A farmer from Karimnagar, a rural district in Andhra Pradesh, her husband...

Migrant workers and minorities are among groups that continue to face discrimination in the labour market as a result of the global economic crisis, despite positive advances in anti-discrimination laws, the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) said in a report unveiled today. “Economically adverse times are a breeding ground for discrimination at work and in society more broadly. We see this with the rise of populist solutions,” said ILO Director-General...

-Irin   Changing the food the US government supplies as aid could deliver better results and still save money, a new study says. The review for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) by researchers at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy has been welcomed by NGOs and US food aid experts, but the findings have also come in for some criticism. The two-year review considered if USAID...

Gary Singh’s abduction ordeal illustrates the dangers faced by those who rely on smugglers to make their way overseas One day in 2006, 18-year-old Gubachan “Gary” Singh, an illegal immigrant in Manila, Philippines, was on his way to work when he was approached by four stocky Filipinos. One pulled out a gun, pressing the barrel into the small of his back, while another blindfolded him and shoved him into a van....

While, the threats of a nuclear fall-out, borne out of a tragedy that happened in the Fakushima Nuke Plant in Japan, started a debate about the positives and negatives of nuclear energy. The media completely ignored the protests and the cries that were being carried out (in fact, for the last 10 to 15 years) in Northern Kerala as well as Southern Karnataka to ban the Pesticide Endosulfan. Perhaps, after the...