-The Telegraph A rights organisation today accused the Centre and state governments of giving huge, unaccounted grants to NGOs including blacklisted ones, often against a bribe. The Asian Centre for Human Rights said it was basing its claims on replies to a series of RTI applications it had filed in 2010. Releasing the report, “India’s Funds to NGOs Squandered”, the rights body’s director, Suhas Chakma, made these claims at a news conference...

-DNA Many have forgotten the bad news that was delivered about a year back when three reports – the international PISA report, the Wipro-EI Quality Education Study and ASER 2011 – painted a sad picture of the learning scenario in India. The first report ranked our Class 10 children 73rd in the world out of 74 countries. The second said that students in our top private schools were learning more poorly...

-The Indian Express After almost three years of consistent improvement in government school education in Punjab, here comes the dampener. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012 released in New Delhi Thursday showed Punjab slipping. Punjab has lost students to private schools, shown only a marginal improvement in reducing the number of “out of school” children and the standard of reading Punjabi, English and solving basic math sums is back...

-The Hindustan Times Publicly funded NGOs, some of them working in key sectors, such as health and rural development, have squandered hundreds of crores of rupees, a report released by a voluntary organisation said. In its  report ‘India’s Funds to NGOs Squandered’, Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) said government funding of voluntary organisations was in dire need of reform as the audit by the CAG of India was infrequent, inadequate and...

-Down to Earth Participation of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes in the scheme has halved in five years The Centre’s flagship rural employment guarantee scheme seems to be losing appeal for its target groups. An analysis of the monitoring report of the Mahatma Gandhi National rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) by Down To Earth (DTE) shows participation of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the scheme has more than halved in last...