It is essential for India to raise the level of public expenditure in education to ensure quality. THE failure of the Indian state more than six decades after Independence to provide universal access to quality schooling and to ensure equal access to higher education among all socio-economic groups and across gender and region must surely rank among the more dismal and significant failures of the development project in the country....

The State's public education system faces the threat of dilution from several quarters. WHEN a national law is finally in place to ensure that not a single child is out of school, there is a growing concern in Kerala, which already has a well-established, though languishing, public education system, about the United Democratic Front (UDF) government's moves to sanction a large number of private, unaided schools. The decision to issue no...

Being trained as solar-power engineers enables women from rural India and Africa to introduce electricity in isolated areas Securing the end of her bright yellow and orange sari firmly around her head, Santosh Devi climbs up to the rooftop of her house to clean her solar panels. The shining, mirrored panels, which she installed herself last year, are a striking sight against the simple one-storey homes of her village. No...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

-The United Nations A top UN official today called on governments, private companies and individuals to join in the battle against non-communicable diseases (NCDs), those that are linked to tobacco, pollution, food and lack of exercise. Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro, addressing a forum entitled The Human and Economic Case to Urgently Address Non-communicable Diseases, said the UN and partners would join in a campaign to “promote exercise, reduce excessive consumption of alcohol...