Two years after the ambitious Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 came into being, 95.2 per cent of schools are not yet compliant with the complete set of RTE infrastructure indicators, a civil society survey nationwide shows. And a shockingly high percentage, 93, of teacher candidates failed in the National Teacher Eligibility Test conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education in 2010-11. In 2009-10, the failure...

-Economic and Political Weekly Yojana Bhavan never seems to know how to count India’s poor That the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government can on occasion after occasion mishandle a situation and also show insensitivity has been in evidence once again in its handling of the poverty figures estimated from the 66th (2009-10) round of the National Sample Survey (NSS). Although the Planning Commission’s estimates, as measured by the Tendulkar methodology, declined sharply...

Little seems to have changed in the city since the Right to Education was implemented exactly two years ago. A large number of schools still lack basic facilities promised under the new constitutional right. A study by Delhi RTE Forum-an umbrella body of 20 non-profit organizations-says denial of admission and absence of basic facilities in schools pose a hurdle in proper implementation of the RTE. The forum had surveyed 207...

-The Times of India   Two years after the implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, a grassroots-level survey conducted across several states by Child Rights and You (CRY) - an umbrella organisation of over 30 non-governmental organisations - indicated that providing free and compulsory education to all under this legislation continued to remain a big challenge. The Act also known as the RTE Act completed two...

It is worrying that the Tendulkar method, chosen by the Planning Commission to calculate the poverty line in its latest figures, underestimates the levels of poverty while overestimating poverty reduction. The figures show that 29.8% or 360 million Indians were poor in 2009-10 as compared to 37.2% or 400 million in 2004-05. A poor person has been defined as one who spends R28 per day in urban areas and R22.5...