-Reuters India has the third-highest number of people living with HIV in the world, with 2.1 million Indians accounting for four of every 10 people infected in Asia, the United Nations said in a report on Wednesday. The epidemic has killed about 39 million of the 78 million people it has affected worldwide since it began in the 1980s, the UN AIDS programme said, adding that the number of people infected...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: "Is there andhergardi (lawlessness) in this country," an angry Supreme Court asked after being told by the Naveen Patnaik government that unlicensed labour contractors chopped off the palms of two migrant labourers' after the tribal men they had herded for contract labour in brick kilns managed to flee. Counsel Jayshree Satpute and R S Jena narrated the unending exploitation of tribal men in six districts of...

India has witnessed many fiery debates on poverty estimates. Equally contentious has been the issue of inequality. Now a new report on exclusion offers a fresh perspective on poverty, inequality and social justice. (See below a summary of the report) Based on data and knowledge resources available in the public domain, India Exclusion Report 2013-14 highlights the systematic discrimination faced by women, Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Muslims, persons with...

-The Hindustan Times   Faridkot: When it comes to paddy transplantation, the migrant labour from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and some other states, contributes a lot to meet the acute labour crisis in the region. It is another possible reason that, perhaps, distracts the farmers from the direct sowing of rice (DSR), otherwise, if the migrant labour is not available for paddy transplantation, farmers may be forced to shift towards the technique. "A large...

-The Business Standard   How a law to conserve groundwater led to a better paid and better organised migrant workforce Ludhiana: For some years now, Punjab's fields have lain fallow through the searing dry heat of May; but come June's steamy humidity, small bands of lithe, slender men from Bihar fan out across the waterlogged paddy fields, transplanting rice saplings with fluid efficiency. Bihar's paddy planters have frequented Punjab since the 1960s when rice...