-The Hindu With the U.S. showing a preference for plurilateral agreements over WTO multilateralism, developing nations must defend the global trading system against transnational corporations The 10th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which also marked the completion of two decades of functioning of the most recent of the multilateral institutions, ended with an agreement among trade ministers of the member countries that may have pushed the organisation to the...

-The Indian Express When the UPA government passed the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, that laid down in clear terms that the age of consent for sex is 18 years, even then activists had warned against such misuse. THE Supreme Court refused to extend the detention of the juvenile convicted in the 2012 Delhi gangrape saying it has to go by the law as it stands today. Lawmakers...

-The Economic Times LUCKNOW: The latest edition of the United Nations Development Programme report on Human Development Index released on Monday has referred to Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) as among the best known employment guarantee schemes providing direct jobs to the rural poor. Interestingly, in February this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had referred to the scheme as a "living monument" of Congress-led UPA government's failures. MGNREGS, which...

-The Indian Express India's record is particularly distressing when it comes to representation of women in Parliament and their labour force participation. It is three years Wednesday, since the brutal Delhi gang-rape seared the country’s conscience. The outrage that followed led many to believe that this could be the catalyst that would bring about radical change in India’s endemic gender disparity. However, the recently-released Gender Inequality Index tells a sorry tale...

-The Indian Express Among South Asian countries, India fares better than only Afghanistan which is at 152. India ranks 130 out of 155 countries in the Gender Inequality Index (GII) for 2014, way behind Bangladesh and Pakistan that rank 111 and 121 respectively, according to data in the United National Development Programme’s latest Human Development Report (HDR) 2015. Among South Asian countries, India fares better than only Afghanistan which is at 152. The...