-The Indian Express The tragedy of several women dying after undergoing sterilisation operations in the Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh has once again thrown up uncomfortable questions around India's population programme. Although the cases are being investigated and the exact cause of the deaths has not been ascertained, the incident brings to light the abysmal conditions in which women are compelled to accept government-provided contraception. India is a signatory to an agreement at...

-The Hindu Dharmapuri (Tamil Nadu): An emaciated Kumudha looks the very symbol of women who have no reproductive agency or bodily rights, one of the many reasons for the neonatal deaths that occurred at the government hospital here last weekend. A week after losing her two-day-old son to preterm-low birth weight complications, Kumudha just returned home after administration of intravenous fluids at the primary health centre at Palayamapudur, some six km from...

-Tehelka Despite the serious toll it takes on women's health, female sterilisation remains the most prevalent form of contraception in India. While memories of the 21 months of Emergency in 1975-77, imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, survives even today in the minds of Indian men as the fear of forced sterilisation, the country's population control policies have shifted over the years since then to target the politically less...

-Economic and Political Weekly How will the amendments to the Factories Act affect women workers? How do women view the "protections" and night work? Apoorva Kaiwar (akaiwar@yahoo.co.in) is a labour lawyer and consultant on issues of gender and labour. The central government is proposing to amend several labour laws. The process of amending them has been underway since 2011, which means that it is not only the new dispensation that is eager to...

-The Hindu   Obesity among children due to rampant consumption of junk food has reached epidemic proportions. With India already in the grip of this dangerous global trend, the government needs to remove its blinkers on the processed food industry One of the first declarations of the newly elected government in June was a proposal to ban unhealthy or junk food (defined as food high on fat, sugar and salt) in school...