-The Hindu     The acute shortage of toilets across the country has come to the fore again with the gang-rape and murder of two teenage Dalit girls in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh who went missing on the night of May 27th after they went to relieve themselves in the open because they did not have access to a toilet at home. The lack of toilets impacts the safety of women and this had been...

-Down to Earth   100,000 young children and Teenage girls are victims of 'bonded labour' in Tamil Nadu; dalit girls worse off An international organisation working for welfare of workers has drawn attention to the hazardous and exploitative working conditions of young girls working for the garment sector in Tamil Nadu. An estimated 100,000 children and Teenage girls are working in extremely oppressive conditions in the spinning mills and garment factories in Tamil Nadu,...

-The Hindu The dropout rate remains troublingly high Private school enrolment continues to rise, but the already low levels of what children are learning in schools - both government and private - continue to fall, new data shows. The Hindu is reporting exclusively on the findings of the 2011-12 round of India Human Development Survey (IHDS), a representative national sample of 42,000 households, carried out by the National Council for Applied Economic Research...

-The Hindu     The extent of violence against the girl as foetus and infant shows how deep the bias against women is and why they will be secure only if India introspects and changes Over the next few weeks, there will be many tussles between our mostly male politicians over India's security. But almost no one will ask if a country can be secure when half its citizens live in deepening insecurity, threatened...

-Newsclick.in Mewat is a living example of how Haryana government has failed to look at malnutrition amongst adolescent girls as a socio-economic problem. Neha Dixit reports "Her father needed money for installing a tube well in the fields, we had no option," says Afra. She is the mother of Humra, 15, who passed away in the Punhana block of Mewat district in Haryana on September 22nd. She bled to death while delivering...