-The Times of India MUMBAI: After an embarrassing show in 2009, India has backed out of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) slated for 2015. The programme is a global evaluation process by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) secretariat that gauges where schoolchildren stand alongside their peers from other countries. This academic Olympics measures the performance of 15 year olds in reading, math and science. Indians were put...

-The Hindustan Times Indore: At a time when crime against women is on the rise and patriarchal mindset spurs people towards honour killing, the opium-cultivating village of Guradia Narsinghpur in western Madhya Pradesh's Mandsaur district has heralded a revolution of sorts. Located in a district notorious for Girl Child trafficking, Guradia Narsinghpur village under Gatod tehsil has adopted family planning vigorously. Most families do not have more than two children even if...

-The Hindu   Channai: The population grew by 97.4 lakh persons, including 47.4 lakh males and over 50 lakh females, between 2001 and 2011. A rapidly urbanising Tamil Nadu faces significant social and economic challenges, going by indicators in the 2011 census abstract report released here on Friday. The ratio of rural to urban population has nearly reached parity and stands, in percentage terms, at 51.6 in villages and 48.4 in cities. Tamil Nadu's...

-The Hindu Kuala Lumpur: The horrific gang-rape of a young paramedical student in New Delhi on December 16, 2012 overshadowed India's achievements at the three-day Women Deliver conference that concluded here on Thursday. The episode figured in discussions held over three days even as the Indian delegates attempted to highlight the successes made in improving the reproductive and child health. On Wednesday morning, when philanthropist Melinda Gates acknowledged the achievements of the Bihar...

-The Hindu   With her passing, Indian feminism has lost one of its earliest icons Three years ago, almost to the day, when we launched Vina Mazumdar's memoir, Memories of a Rolling Stone, the room at the Habitat Centre in Delhi was packed to overflowing. Resplendent in her beautiful silk, Vinadi, as she was known to everyone around her, smiled her way through the evening as bureaucrats, academics, politicians, educationists, feminists and others...