-The Indian Express The NEP’s assault on playgrounds deprives children, particularly those belonging to lower castes and the urban poor, of their right to play in safe and adequate spaces. Children, especially in urban areas, are disenfranchised from equitable spatial resources, despite being equal members of society. The access to playgrounds, the only lands allotted for children’s needs, depends on class and caste privileges. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory...

School meals ensure nutrition for millions of vulnerable children across the world. Almost 370 million children worldwide are covered by school feeding programmes. While 100 million school children benefitted from the noon meal scheme in India prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, countries like Brazil (48 million), China (44 million), South Africa (9 million) and Nigeria (9 million) too run similar programmes for school children. However, an estimated 39 billion in-school...

-National Herald While Americans take themselves as citizens and demand responsibility and accountability from power, Indians are still slavish, says Kannan Gopinathan, who resigned from IAS What happened in Washington DC at the Capitol Hill Building was watched in horror and everybody said, “Look democracy can fail even in America.” To me it looked like the triumph of American democracy. Attempts to overturn the Presidential election failed. State after state stood up to...

-The Hindu A group of 100 volunteers from various fields have teamed up with lawyers to arm economically and educationally weak people with knowledge about their rights against victimisation Guwahati: Aditpur has not been known for academics. But this village, about 20 km from western Assam’s Barpeta town, is teaching the Constitution of India to “doubtful” Indians who have never heard of it. Local activists and youth had on December 20 opened a...

-News18.com The new National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020 hereafter) has rekindled the debate on the various kinds of problems in Indian education. One of the problems which has bothered me is the need for reforms in rural government elementary schools, more specifically the need for addressing the problem of sub-optimal schooling experiences and poor learning outcomes of poor rural children. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014 brought out...