-The Times of India Over two crore households have been denied work under the fund-starved rural job guarantee scheme in the past eight months. This is a direct result of the deep cuts in funding of the scheme and various other changes initiated by the Modi government. With the employment situation still dire and the new government's long-term efforts to catalyze industrial growth still on the drawing board, the failure of...

-The Hindu The rhetoric on the capacity of countries to reap the so-called demographic dividend cannot mask the more complex reality of a not-so-young world in 2014, and non-uniform patterns of growth. About a quarter of the world's population - 1.8 billion - is in the age-group of 10-24 years, according to the latest United Nations Population Fund report. In 1950, the proportion was higher, at almost a third of the...

-The Hindustan Times One does not have to agree with his views to be intrigued by the possibilities opened up by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's emergence as communicator/harangue-master in chief. Public conversations about who we are and who we want to be are key to the vitality of our democracy, and leaders can seed those conversations when they speak out their own views. When I hear people in the Delhi metro...

-The Hindu Without adequate preparations for its consequences, the State has gone ahead with the merger of small schools with the larger ones. Is there a way out? The Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani's act of consulting an astrologer in Rajasthan may be a personal choice, but her mention of possible amendments to the Right to Education (RTE) Act has definitely created a mess in the State. While she has...

-The Pioneer The Modi Government has set March 2017 deadline to provide safe drinking water in country's 17,995 habitations where rural people are being forced to consume contaminated water - laced with fluoride, arsenic and heavy toxic metals - causing major health problems. To achieve this, the Union Ministry of Water and Sanitation has outlined a two-pronged strategy entailing installation of community water purification plants or through piped water supply from alternate...