-NDTV Manasa, Madhya Pradesh: In a town in Madhya Pradesh, 90 children in uniform go every day to a women's toilet complex that they call school. Classes are interrupted whenever women need to use the bathrooms. The children are made to turn the other way and wait till the women are finished. "It is very dirty and smelly, but no one cares that we are forced to study in a bathroom," said Tina,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: More than three years after the implementation of the RTE Act and an expenditure of over Rs 46,282.11 crore on school infrastructure, around 1.28 lakh out of 10,75,407 government elementary schools across the country still don't have toilets and over 61,000 lack drinking water facilities. According to the District Information System for Education 2011-12, Bihar has 18,169 schools without lavatories, the highest among states. Andhra Pradesh...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Government has proposed standards for playschools that include the size of the classroom and outdoor space, mandatory use of mother tongue or vernacular language as medium of instruction and student-caregiver ratio. These conditions are part of the 'early childhood care and education' (ECCE) formulated by the women and child development (WCD) ministry and slated to be discussed in the Union Cabinet on Friday. Among the "base...

-The Indian Express Manual scavenging laws will need to be supported by better sanitation policies. The recent passage of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill by Parliament is a welcome, long-overdue step in the right direction. The bill replaces the outdated and rarely implemented 1993 law, which purported to abolish manual scavenging. It has been passed primarily due to a sustained campaign by thousands of former women...

-The Hindu Geeta Dharmarajan, founder of Katha, which has just completed 25 years of reaching out to the unreached in the National Capital. Scrolling down the students' blog of Katha, the non-profit organisation in the National Capital which runs schools for underprivileged children living in 248 slums, I come across a complaint letter by a child addressed to the Chairman, Municipal Corporation of Delhi. The child wants to bring to his notice...