-Down to Earth Death and injury prevention get little attention To address the problem of road safety, the Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has published a draft Road Transport and Safety Bill for public comments and suggestions. If passed by Parliament, it would replace the existing Motor Vehicles Act of 1988. While the bill should be aiming for zero mortality, it has set a target to save 200,000 lives in...

-The Hindu With public schools not performing and private schools teaching students to compete rather than learn, India's primary sites of education are at risk The Rajasthan government recently decided to close down more than 17,000 schools, the Maharashtra government decided to close down about 14,000 schools and the Odisha government is closing down 195 schools because of low attendance by students. These are not stray incidents, but indicate the decline of...

-Down to Earth India presents its case on potential damage posed by WTO's trade facilitation agreement; civil society groups support India India made a strong pitch for food stockpiling for public food security at the 41st session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) earlier this month at the FAO headquarters in Rome. The meeting of the intergovernmental body, attended by representatives of governments, UN food agencies, civil society and private...

-The Hindu Package drawn up by child rights protection commission Palakkad (Kerala): The Kerala State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) will implement an educational package for tribal pre-primary children in their own language. The initiative is aimed at ending the feeling of alienation among tribal children when they get initiated into the world of letters in Malayalam, which is an alien language to them. Pilot project The project that will introduce the children...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: The government plans to rope in various departments and ministries such as agriculture, land resources, horticulture and social forestry to create bigger and more durable assets under the rural job guarantee scheme, going ahead with its plans to revamp the national programme. "Considering the capacity constraint at the gram panchayat level, which is the main implementing agency for allocating works under the scheme, we are considering to...