-The United Nations A top United Nations official today strongly encouraged governments to adopt special temporary measures, such as quotas, to boost the number of women in parliament and decision-making positions, pointing to the progress achieved by women in India as a result of affirmative action. “Here in India, quotas have spurred one of the world’s greatest successes in women’s empowerment and grassroots democracy,” Michelle Bachelet said in her keynote address to...

-The Hindu Here is a classic case that will reveal how the “high-handedness” of a few officials has affected the lives of two Dalit women in Udupi. The two women, Akku and Leela, have put in about four decades of service at the Government women Teachers’ Training Institute on a monthly salary of Rs. 15. Although they were promised that their services would be regularised, they did not get any benefits even...

-IANS At a meet to discuss making parliaments gender-sensitive, organised in the Parliament House, many women parliamentarians were conspicuous by their absence. India is hosting the 7th Meeting of women Speakers of Parliament on Gender-Sensitive Parliaments organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The two-day event held in the Parliament House was inaugurated by President Pranab Mukherjee Wednesday and is attended by women speakers and delegates from many countries. While there were a number of delegates...

-Mid Day 'Mafia' set up these establishments across the state to usurp government grants, reveals report submitted by state child rights commission; many of them were being run as hostels and coaching centre Corruption is now so rampant in every sphere in this country that it has become a child’s play for the perpetrators. MiD DAY has learnt that the Congress-led Democratic Front government is sitting on a sensational report submitted by...

Remember Arjun Sengupta Committee Report? It’s the same report which put paid to government’s shifting poverty estimates by asserting that almost 80% Indian survive on less than Rs 20 per day. Known as the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), the report has gone missing from the public domain. The official website of NCEUS is no more working: http://nceus.gov.in, raising doubts regarding someone, somewhere trying to hide...