The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act was billed to be a giant leap towards universalization of education in India. However, it has acquired the dubious distinction of being the only fundamental right that exists just on paper. More than seven years after the Constitution was amended in 2002 to make free and compulsory education to children in the age group of 6-14 a fundamental right and over four...
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Jobs for families that hand over land to railways
Those willing to hand over their land for the laying of new railway tracks will be adequately compensated and a member of the families concerned provided employment, Mamata Banerjee, Railway Minister announced on Monday. “The railways will not acquire land forcibly and will negotiate with those willing to hand over their land. We will provide them adequate compensation as well as a job to one member of their family. This is...
More »Piracy of old Indian knowledge rising by Rashme Sehgal
Biopiracy in the field of medicine is on the rise with Europe and the US being granted 2,000 patents every year for drugs based on Indian traditional systems of medicine. These patents are being granted by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTP), the European Patent Office (EPO) and other overseas patent offices. This startling claim was made by forests and environment minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday. It is to reverse...
More »The unsettled debate on Indian poverty by R Ramakumar
The Tendulkar Committee has pitched for a policy position that is stranded between the harsh realities of poverty and a fiscally conservative neo-liberal FRAmework. The debate on the extent of poverty in India has been a matter of global interest in the recent years. The primary reason for the global interest in the debate is that the levels of poverty in India and China have come to exert significant influence...
More »Hard Times by Ashok Mitra
Food prices have shot up by more than 20 per cent in the course of the past 12 months. A vast proportion of the nation is being battered by the price rise — the fixed income group, the working classes, landless peasantry and small farmers who have to buy at least a part of the grains they consume from the market. There is, however, no upheaval among the suffering people....
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