After a long tussle with the Centre over sharing of expenditure, the Uttar Pradesh Government has finally started working on the implementation of the Right to Education Act. The Basic Education Department has been asked to speed up work on finalising rules for the implementation of the Act as well as for conducting eligibility tests for appointing teachers. The government is keen to appoint 80,000 teachers before the Assembly elections are...

-PTI   It is force versus children in the battle for land to set up South Korean giant POSCO's proposed mega steel project in Orissa's Jagatsinghpur district where the anti-displacement stir has entered the decisive phase. While a determined state government has accused the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), a body spearheading agitation, of using the children as a "shield", the villagers sought to differ. "We involve children in the agitation to counter...

A year before assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the Planning Commission has ranked the state poorly on performance of 12 major flagship schemes of the Central government. The new analysis is likely to provide Congress ammunition against the Mayawati government on UP for not been able to utilize the Central government funds effectively. The new ranking, which is the part of annual state plan report for 2011-12, finds UP at the bottom...

The ends may justify the means, but let's be clear - in rural India, extremes of coercion are being used to encourage toilet use Robert Chambers recently wrote that community-led total sanitation is leading to a development revolution, especially in south Asia. I agree with his assessment of sanitation's importance. In practice, however, the success of community-led efforts often hinges on the use of outright coercion. In my experience, the measures...

The first global report on disability reveals how the exclusion of 1 billion people – invisible in official statistics and absent from aid budgets – is holding back development progress The UN millennium development goals (MDGs) may not be met by 2015 unless urgent action is taken to address the needs of people with disabilities, according to the first world report on disability. More than 1 billion people live with a disability,...