What do three members of the National Advisory Council, two members of the Planning Commission, Editors (including the editor and executive editor of this magazine), MPs from across the political spectrum, CII members and the NCPCR have in common? One single demand: no child under 14 should be engaged in child labour. Forty-five eminent members of society from very diverse backgrounds have thrown their considerable weight behind an ongoing campaign...

The 25 per cent quota in all schools envisaged by the RTE has created a big debate Do upper middle class people in a city believe that the quality of their child's education is compromised when they share classroom space with the children of construction labourers or domestic workers? This fundamental question is at the heart of the heated debate on a clause in the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act,...

Amipur may be a small dot along the national highway from Patna to Nawada, but its ambitions are big. In the 50-odd households in the village, sparsely populated and rife with an uneasy quiet, most men have left for work outside Bihar. Siyaram Chauhan is the one who returned. He was rescued last month by the state government officials from a brick kiln in Uttar Pradesh’s Bahraich where he worked as...

The NAC's recommendations on food security measures take heed of the fact that PDS reform is dependent on the availability of enough foodgrains. Three major elements of the United Progressive Alliance government's commitment to provide food security to the people are reforming the public distribution system (PDS), raising foodgrain productivity and production, and creating a decentralised, modern warehousing system. Ideally, the reforms in the PDS should have come first for the availability...

The government owes crores of rupees to workers under its flagship rural jobs scheme as wages for April and May, even though payment is not supposed to be delayed by more than a fortnight. Wage payments of Rs283 crore are due for the first two months of the ongoing fiscal under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, according to data available with the rural development ministry, which oversees the...