-Livemint.com Every time she felt her bladder was full, 12-year-old Madhuri Kumari left her classroom and ran to her nearby home to use the toilet. At her government-run school in Sangam Vihar, South Delhi, this was the norm for many students for years. The primary school with 1,300 boys and an equal number of girls had neither a toilet nor a drinking water facility. What was more embarrassing for the girl than...

-Economic and Political Weekly The decennial National Sample Survey on health and education provides useful information on the health and education of the population. The summary report on health from the 71st round conducted in 2014 allows us to make an initial assessment of three sets of issues. One, the trends in morbidity rates and patterns of morbidity, two, the effectiveness of the public sector in ensuring access to healthcare, and...

-The Indian Express Note to policymakers: Access to technology by itself does not ensure learning. Speaking at the Saarc Summit in Nepal last November, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that “information technology has removed all barriers to quality education”. With the launch of Digital India, state governments and education practitioners have become increasingly interested in the potential of technology to address low learning levels in primary schools. Behind Modi’s assertion is a...

-Tehelka Last year’s Red Fort rhetoric has not been matched by action on the ground, with separate toilets for students remaining elusive as ever One part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Independence Day this year can safely be predicted: the reeling out of statistics to prove that the Swachh Bharat campaign is sweeping the nation. The cleanliness drive launched on 2 October, 2014, was announced from the ramparts of the...

-The Times of India Neetu Meena, 16, in a pale blue uniform, wants to become a nurse. She is the first girl in her family to get this far at school. Schooling is not only free, she gets a scholarship and a bike to come in to the senior secondary government school in Jhar village, Bassi, near Jaipur. At the school, a blackboard lists about twenty schemes, from special scholarships for girls,...