-The Week Shambhu Kumar, 8, quite liked his job as a domestic help in a small town in Assam. He had to mind two children nearly his age, keep an eye on the ducks and be available for chores all day. It wasn't too hard, and he was well fed, too, though he missed his grandmother, a tea garden labourer. One day, some women from the state education department came to the...

-Outlook Washington: An Indian medical researcher has been awarded the US-based Institute of Medicine's (IOM) 2014 Sarnat Prize for his contributions to improving mental health care in developing countries. Vikram Patel yesterday was presented with the Sarnat Prize, which consists of a medal and USD 20,000, at IOM's annual meeting in Washington. "Through his research, Vikram Patel not only brought a largely unacknowledged problem - mental health disorders in developing nations - into...

-The Indian Express Moves to dilute labour-material ratio in MGNREGA and focus exclusively on select backward blocks will adversely impact rural poor. Before the general elections, free-market fundamentalists had lobbied fiercely to reshape so-called wasteful social-sector expenditures. Primary among their targets was the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), which, according to them, should become an unconditional cash transfer scheme. Post-elections, the late Gopinath Munde's espousal of the MGNREGA went...

-The Hindu Rapid urbanisation, globalisation, consumerism, poor solid waste and water management and increasing population movement have created new habitats for mosquito breeding Dengue fever is rearing its ugly head again in India with new cases of infections and even deaths being reported from different States. The world's fastest growing vector-borne disease, dengue sees an estimated 50-100 million cases being reported annually in over 100 endemic countries. Ever since its detection in...

-The Hindu NSSO urged to use time-use surveys to ascertain homemakers' economically productive activity Close to two out of every three Indian women are, in their prime working years, primarily engaged in unpaid housework, new NSSO data shows. This phenomenon, on the rise over the last decade, is least common in the southern and north-eastern States and most common in the northern States, Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in particular. In data released on...