Women's organisations rise up against a petition that seeks an amendment to Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code. A PETITION that alleges the misuse of Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, which has been admitted by the Rajya Sabha Committee on Petitions, has become an object of concern among leading women's organisations in the country. The petition claims that the law, dealing with dowry-related torture and acute domestic...

Striking workers at Foxconn India in Sriperumbudur near Chennai take on the corporate giant, demanding better wages. WORKERS at Foxconn-India in Sriperumbudur in Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu, have been on strike from September 24 demanding better wages. They also want the reinstatement of 24 suspended colleagues and the withdrawal of an eight-day wage cut slapped on some workers. That they have held out for so long is remarkable, not least...

A combination of factors led by state policy has enabled the southern State to become a notable achiever with respect to some key indicators of development. In 2001, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen recorded an eyebrow-raising fact in his book, “Development as Freedom”, that Tamil Nadu and Kerala had both achieved much faster rates of decline in fertility than China had achieved since it introduced its one-child policy. That same year, the international...

India is planning to replicate China's barefoot doctor experiment in the legal field aiming to train one lakh para-legal volunteers who would tell rural people not to sleep over their rights violations and encourage them to take recourse to justice system for remedial measures. Nearly 30 years after China abolished the barefoot doctor scheme under which farmers were given basic medical and para-medical training to work in rural areas, the...

KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...