A group of villagers sit on a shaded platform on a hot afternoon in Mirche village. The topic of discussion today is the Mongra barrage - a dam-like structure constructed on the nearby Shivnath river. The conversation is animated. The villagers discuss the displacement the barrage has caused and the lack of compensation from the authorities. "It's been four years since the dam was built. Where is our compensation," asks...

Just as microcredit on its own does not represent full financial inclusion, it is our view that neither do business correspondent accounts In a country of 1.2 billion individuals, if we exclude children, we should at least have 900 million bank account holders before we can say the job of basic inclusion in banking is complete. No matter how we count, however, the actual number of bank account holders do not...

Journalists who have made the transition to independent online publishing measure themselves against the same professional bar that print journalists do, and are equally differentiated as credible sources in much the same way as newspapers are. Only, the traditional media were holding them to a higher standard than its own, members of a panel discussion at the ongoing 16th World Editors Forum of WAN-IFRA here argued. If anything, some sections...

It’s not hard to find tender hands of children as young as five washing utensils at roadside dhabas or girls below 14 working as domestic helps in India’s IT hub Bangalore. A new e—journal is being started in another effort to fight the menace. The State Resource Centre (SRC) on Child Labour is all set to start the bi-monthly journal within the next three months. “The idea behind the e-journal...

KEY TRENDS   • At the national level, the proportion of government schools having facilities like drinking water was 96.39 percent, boys' toilet was 94.64 percent, girls' toilet was 97.03 percent, boundary wall was 60.12 percent, playground was 56.98 percent, ramp was 71.50 percent, CWSN toilet was 19.59 percent, electricity was 56.45 percent and library was 79.36 percent, according to the Unified District Information System For Education (UDISE) 2017-18 (Provisional) *12   • ASER 2019 ‘Early Years’ data shows a clear...