Educationists are questioning the retrospective nature of the no-fail policy that was made applicable to schools in Goa earlier this month through a circular, days after the results of the last academic year had been declared. While there appears to be a near consensus that the policy will be beneficial, the haste with which the directorate of education (DoE) is implementing this, is leading to various questions being raised. "It...

In the 1920s, a young Tamil girl sang and starred in her school musical. It was, ostensibly, a private event with few outsiders. Yet so exceptional was her singing that Swadesamitran ran her photograph and wrote about the event. Seeing that photo in the newspaper, her household “was appalled” for, as the music historian V Sriram writes, “good, chaste women never had their photographs published in papers”. Today, this seems like...

Like the majority of India's children, the Right to Education (RTE) Act has completed its first year facing malnourishment, neglect and routine criticism. A year after it was notified as law, the right to elementary education remains a dream. The law provides a 5-year window to its implementation but the dream it legislates looks as elusive now as it did when this countdown started. While one important clause is facing...

President Pratibha Patil has given her assent to the Ordinance that seeks to extend the tenure of the Board of Governors of the Medical Council of India (MCI) by another year. A gazette notification in this regard was issued on Wednesday. The tenure of the Board was to expire on May 14. The extension was earlier approved at a meeting of the Union Cabinet last month. The Ordinance would have to be...

The arrest of Suresh Kalmadi on 25 April marked yet another scene in the prolonged drama surrounding the Commonwealth Games held in Delhi in October 2010. Yet the general media focus on Kalmadi may have served to distract attention from the many other acts of omission and commission that mark the sordid history of that extravagantly planned and deeply flawed public show. In these other actions, there are stories of funds...