For most people in cities, Labour Day (or May Day, which was on May 1) was just another public holiday that nobody thought too much about. On a day marked to give voice to the rights of the Indian work force, perhaps one ought to consider those who have been forced to join their ranks too soon - child labourers. According to government estimates, an astounding 42.02% of the Indian workforce...

-IANS   Even rich and educated Indian families with a girl as the first child choose to abort their second child if prenatal test shows it to be a girl, said a study released by Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR) here Tuesday. According to the study: 'Analysis of the trends examined from the statistics of the census of year 2011, 2001, 1991 note a sharp decline in the girl-to-boy sex ratio...

Educationists are questioning the retrospective nature of the no-fail policy that was made applicable to Schools in Goa earlier this month through a circular, days after the results of the last academic year had been declared. While there appears to be a near consensus that the policy will be beneficial, the haste with which the directorate of education (DoE) is implementing this, is leading to various questions being raised. "It...

In the 1920s, a young Tamil girl sang and starred in her School musical. It was, ostensibly, a private event with few outsiders. Yet so exceptional was her singing that Swadesamitran ran her photograph and wrote about the event. Seeing that photo in the newspaper, her household “was appalled” for, as the music historian V Sriram writes, “good, chaste women never had their photographs published in papers”. Today, this seems like...

Bhatta Parsaul was once a quiet farming village but now, as it finds itself at the centre of a major political row, it is strewn with mounds of ash, burnt-out motorcycles, tractors and cars. In early May villagers here clashed with armed police who tried to break up a four-month-old sit-in protest at the village. They had been fighting the terms of the acquisition of their farmland in the Greater Noida...