-The Indian Express   Compulsory education defeats its own purpose if isn’t sufficiently compulsory and long enough. India has been a late entrant into the community of nations that offer their children free and compulsory education up to a basic level, for a certain minimum number of years. The Right of All Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, passed in 2009, entitled every child between 6 and 14 years of...

The World Bank has approved $1 billion as credit and loan to support India's efforts to clean up the Ganga river. The sprawling river basin accounts for a fourth of the country's water resources and is home to more than 400 million people. The $1.556 billion National Ganga River Basin Project with $1 billion in financing from the World Bank group, including $199 million interest-free credit and $801 million low-interest loan, was...

The current perception that cash transfers can replace public provision of basic goods and services and become a catch-all solution for poverty reduction is false. Where cash transfers have helped to reduce poverty, they have added to public provision, not replaced it. For crucial items like food, direct provision protects poor consumers from rising prices and is part of a broader strategy to ensure domestic supply. Problems like targeting errors...

Biotechnology can provide effective solutions to the rising food security problems of the country on the back of rising population and inflation concerns. “With rising population, depleting land and water resources, and a rapid increase in food prices in India, the application of innovation and crop biotechnologies will be critical in enhancing agricultural yields along with achievement of food security for the nation,” G Padmanaban, NASI-Platinum Jubilee Chair of Indian Institute...

Tobacco is a silent killer and the single largest cause of preventable disease including cancer, heart attacks, chronic obstructive lung disease and asthma. According to World Health Organisation, tobacco killed 100 million people in the 20th Century and will kill a billion people (ten times more) in the 21st. Deaths due to tobacco in India are expected to rise from 1.4 per cent in 1990 to 13.3 per cent in 2020....