-The Hindu ‘Need for effective time-bound grievance redressal mechanism to deal with violations that are happening on the ground’ A study on implementation of the Right to Education Act in Delhi in three years of its existence has revealed “overwhelming violations’’ of the norms on the ground. The study by NGO Josh, with support of VSO India, has noted that while “73 per cent of the schools had contract teachers’’, in 99 per...

-The Hindu There is statistical data to show that the height of Indian children is correlated to their and their neighbourhood’s access to toilets You can learn a lot from measuring children’s height. How tall a child has grown by the time she is a few years old is one of the most important indicators of her well-being. This is not because height is important in itself, but because height reflects a...

-The Economic Times Almost every fortnight, Nandan Nilekani knocks on the doors of the Reserve Bank to push his case for making Aadhaar an easy gateway to a bank account. He has reached a frontier that, when crossed, could multiply the number of Indians, untouched by high-street banks, to have accounts. An inexpensive technology to execute this exists: the fingerprint of the person with a 12-digit individual identification number is all a...

-The Business Standard The right to speak freely implies no corresponding obligation for someone else to give you a platform to exercise that freedom The circumstances of Mr Modi's invitation by a students' association at the University of Pennsylvania's business school, and subsequent un-ceremonious un-invitation following protests, are well known. What is less clear is the correct interpretation of what happened. Mr Modi's supporters, and even some who don't support him, have cried...

-The Hindu Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s budget for 2013-14 will be remembered not only for its strategies to stimulate economic growth and control fiscal deficit, but also for the importance given to the needs of the underprivileged sections of our society. In the field of agriculture, he has adopted the following three pronged strategy: 1. Defend the gains already made in the original green revolution areas like Punjab and Haryana: For this purpose...