The ongoing pre-school admissions have forced many a city school into a tight corner. Institutions are being driven to do a tightrope walk between the demands of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and the unending pressure from political parties to admit students of their choice. The RTE aims at creating a level playing field for all children by making it mandatory for schools to admit a percentage of underprivileged...

India’s rulers have found a new vocation – maligning environmentalists and questioning the very idea of regulating industry for pollution. Thus, faced with criticism of Lavasa, an artificial gated city of the super-rich near Pune, in which his family has invested crores, Agriculture Minister, Sharad Pawar, lashed out at well-known activist Medha Patkar and other “vested interests” for obstructing this “pioneering” project. Lavasa’s promoters built the project without seeking environmental clearance...

These days, Jhum cultivation also known as ‘slash and burn method of cultivation’, ‘shifting cultivation’ etc has been under continuous scanner for its productivity and ecological viability. This form of cultivation is followed widely in almost all the North Eastern States including the hill areas of Manipur. There are those who consider jhum cultivation as unproductive and ecologically disastrous so that people (understood as tribal people of the hill areas)...

The Planning Commission has said that states will have to bear the additional burden if the minimum wages notified by them are higher than that fixed by the Centre for work under the employment guarantee Act. In the case of rich "states that can afford very high minimum wages, the central government reimbursement will be limited", Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters. For a state where minimum wages are...

The government has a plan to reach welfare to the poor without wasting money. It wants to put hard cash in their hands instead of spending on welfare programmes. To begin with, it wants to end the public distribution system of food grain and give money directly to the people. Its logic: the new system of cash transfer will plug leakages and save an enormous amount of money. But is it...