MG Road is seldom considered as a safe place for working women who travel for work to either Gurgaon or Delhi. Almost everyday untoward incidents related to molestation, sexual harassment, kidnapping or rape that occur here are reported in various NCR-based newspapers. Clearly, safety of women office-goers and female workers is one of the major determinants of their (low) labour force participation, even in urban locations like Gurgaon or Delhi....

-IndiaSpend.org   The failing economics of such farms–agricultural households in the south are most indebted–are exacerbated by additional loans that families take to meet health issues, leaving them with diminished ability to invest in farming. Nearly 70% of India’s 90 million agricultural households spend more than they earn on average each month, pushing them towards debt, which is now the primary reason in more than half of all suicides by farmers nationwide,...

-The Telegraph The Narendra Modi government's record in tacitly supporting the actions of a bunch of vigilante thugs who have been terrorizing the country, especially the Muslims and the Dalits, in the guise of gau rakshaks, or opponents of love jihad, or 'nationalists', has been so outrageous that it has grabbed all the critical attention. In the process, the government's abysmal failures in other spheres have gone virtually unnoticed. One such...

-Livemint.com Forgiving farm loans is no solution. The data shows there’s a far more fundamental problem—most agricultural households are unable to keep body and soul together. There’s nothing new about rural distress. Nor is it surprising. If the income of almost 70% of farm households is less than their consumption expenditure, according to the government’s own data, then it’s obvious they’ll be “distressed”. Yet that’s the inescapable conclusion from the National Sample...

-TheWire.in The Indian farmer is not just a poor, helpless victim who deserves a waiver because he cannot pay. The root cause of the debt trap is that his income has not increased with rising expenditure due to state policies. As Punjab joins the list of states to declare farm loan waivers, the political scales are now heavily tilted in favour of this idea. The government of Telangana, followed by Andhra Pradesh,...