-The Economic Times As elections approach and the campaign gets shriller, the UPA and opposition parties are in the market for talking points to pin each other down. The BJP gloats that it created more jobs in its five years than UPA-I managed to create between 2004 and 2009. This is correct: between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 when the BJP was in power, the total number of jobs went up by a little...

-Al Jazeera   The reforms promoted by Prime Minister Singh do not go far enough to help food production and the hungry. The debate on the Food Security Act is based on myths on both sides. The government is propagating the myth that it is the largest anti-poverty and anti-hunger programme ever introduced anywhere in the world. The programme is being heralded as Sonia Gandhi's dream project, and billed as a miracle solution...

Bihar Government's programme of distributing bicycles to school girls may be a modest intervention but is leading to big changes. A new research-based paper, brought out in August 2013, corroborates the success of the programme and testifies that it is leading to improved school enrollment of girls and arresting their dropout rates (See links below to read full paper and earlier studies on the subject).   Based on econometric and statistical models,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Government has proposed standards for playschools that include the size of the classroom and outdoor space, mandatory use of mother tongue or vernacular language as medium of instruction and student-caregiver ratio. These conditions are part of the 'early childhood care and education' (ECCE) formulated by the women and child development (WCD) ministry and slated to be discussed in the Union Cabinet on Friday. Among the "base...

-Kafila.org This fact-finding exercise was coordinated by the CENTRE FOR POLICY ANALYSIS. Team members were the human rights activist and former civil servant Harsh Mander; former Director-General of the Border Security Force, E N Rammohan; Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy of Jawaharlal Nehru University; National Integration Council member John Dayal; senior journalist Sukumar Muralidharan and CPA Director and senior editor Seema Mustafa. Introduction and Overview The first impression of the Muzaffarnagar countryside, now green...