Jeanilyn Bermudez is a domestic worker in Singapore. But back home in the Philippines, she’s the boss of a recycling business that’s giving others jobs and opportunity. It didn’t happen by chance. She went to business school – a business school for domestic workers. A mentor speaks I’ve been a volunteer mentor at Aidha for over two years now and it’s ...

I first met Shabdar Ali at a Culture Kitchen event, where South Asian migrant workers and other Singapore residents gathered over a hearty meal of Briyani (flavoured rice dish). He came across as an unassuming and friendly person, and though I don’t quite remember what we spoke about, our brief conversation left me with a good impression of him. But ...

Delhi (WFS) – As a child she used to roam around the residential colony in Bikaner in Rajasthan, where she lived with her parents and elder sister, climbing trees, playing with the boys in the neighbourhood, taking swimming and skating lessons. All that changed the day she came back home with a grenade she had found lying on the street ...

[By Sakuntala Narasimhan] Bengaluru (WFS) – * “Beta, keep an eye on her while I go to the clinic,” said Mona’s mother to the young man, who had rented a room in her apartment as a paying guest. He had come to town to prepare for an examination. After she left, he enticed Mona, 7, on to his lap on the ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara | New Internationalist] Some unbelievable news just broke. Move over, Jamie Oliver: school nutrition has taken a leap forward in India, at least on paper. India’s middle-class urban kids are more obese than they have ever been. It is worrisome, given the high incidence of diabetes among Indian adults in the last few decades. This obesity ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] New Delhi: When Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan says that expectations from Narendra Modi Government were ‘probably unrealistic’ he is stating only half the truth. In reality, the expectations were not just unrealistic they were – and are always – vested in the case of many people across the length and breadth of the ...

[By Abha Sharma] Tonk (Women’s Feature Service) – Until a few years back, there was no way that mothers like Salma, Nagma or Zebunnisa in Tonk, a small town in Rajasthan, could feed their newborn till an elder in the family came over to whisper the ‘azan’, or prayer, into the ears of the little one. Only after this ritual was ...

[By Stephen Woodcock | The Conversation] The American mathematician John Nash, who died in a taxi accident at the weekend, is probably best known to the wider public through Russell Crowe’s portrayal of him in the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind. His career in academia was glittering – he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1994 and only ...

[By Aishwarya Yerra] On Wednesday, US intelligence agencies declassified more than 100 documents that were seized during a raid on the world’s most-wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. These documents contained a treasure trove of information on Al Qaeda and their then leader and we give you the key points from these newly-released files: 26/11 was heroic The documents ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] Anoopshahr: “Did you love your daughter today?” postcard-shaped, billboards carved into walls on either side of the gate, bag to know.  “Yes we did,” the answer is written just under the question cordoned off by smileys on both sides. Walk in and you have yellow planks shored up on green-yellow painted lamp posts on your right proclaiming with a smiley ...