India's top business and technology Schools are struggling to keep pace with the growing gender diversity aspirations of big employers in India Inc.  Women students at IITs have almost doubled to 11% in five years and their numbers at two B-Schools - ISB-Hyderabad (29%) and IIM-Kozhikode (36%) - are inching closer to Harvard Business School (39%). Yet, recruiters complain there still aren't enough women graduates to untangle the diversity labyrinth at...

Teachers, forget the word scold if you want to steer clear of trouble — or even jail. The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has said no teacher can discriminate or mentally abuse a child based on his/her physical disability, caste, colour, gender or religion. Its new guidelines, which have to be ratified by the human resource development ministry, also forbid teachers from using sarcasm, humiliating adjectives, ridicule based on a...

After Haryana ban, illegal mining shifts to Sikar’s hills Who’s The Quarry? More than 400 active leases in the Sikar belt 1,200 trucks move out of Rajasthan Aravallis daily In Dabla alone, 50 ha of land mined Area has five small rivers, three clogged with sludge. *** The ceiling of her house has some long cracks, the roof has become unstable, the floor in some parts has caved in. When Reshmi built her house in the Dabla...

Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA) a poverty buster? Or is it a job destroyer? The answer seems to be both, though the scheme of late, has been bedevilled by corruption and many states have lost their enthusiasm for it, forcing the rural development ministry to revamp the scheme last week (read here about the changes). While the scheme has been attacked for many reasons – bloating rural...

India’s decision-makers seem to find it difficult to see that there are children in the country. Being unable to see them, they are unable to perceive that they are hungry. In an age when we are able to use euphemisms like ‘under-nutrition’, this is perhaps not surprising. But it is disgraceful none the less.   This country has a large population of children. Fortyone per cent of its total numbers. The national...