-Hindustan Times It was a showpiece legislation when it was launched by the UPA government in 2009. The Right to Education, many hoped, would ensure a decent level of primary education to those who cannot afford expensive private education. The scheme started with much fanfare, but in a few years, reports started coming out that while enrolment in schools has shot up (almost 99% now), the quality of education has not...

-The Hindu But Tamil films are refreshingly different. Just six of the lead characters in the nearly 300 Bollywood movies released over the last two years belonged to a backward caste, an analysis of data by The Hindu shows. In contrast, a substantial number of popular Tamil movies of 2013 and 2014 had backward caste lead characters. For an insight into the depiction of caste in Bollywood, The Hindu analysed all Hindi movies released...

-The Indian Express In both the methodologies, the home-seekers had the same credentials but for their names that indicated their caste and religion. A study on discrimination in urban housing rental preferences, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Economic and Political Weekly, shows high levels of exclusion of Dalits and Muslims in the five metropolitan areas of NCR. The team of researchers, led by Prof S K Thorat, chairman of...

-The Hindu Washington: A top global human rights group has criticised the Indian government for its treatment of minorities, lack of protection for women's and children's rights, restrictions on free speech and insufficient support extended for human rights via New Delhi's foreign policy engagements. In its 25th annual World Report on human rights, New York-headquartered Human Rights Watch noted that there was a "spike" in incidents of violence against religious minorities in...

-The Hindustan Times The editor, a liberal man, is taken aback by my question. "I don't hire people on the basis of their caste but their ability," he informs me when I ask how many Dalits he has in his newsroom. Nearly 70 years after Independence, my question should have been irrelevant. But a caste survey by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland, United States,...