-The Hindu   Convention suggests steps to combat malnutrition   The second “national convention on children's right to food” concluded here on Sunday with a call to link anti-malnutrition strategies to inflationary indices. The three-day convention in which about 1,000 delegates from 21 States participated, adopted a 25-point “charter” on combating malnutrition. Shanta Sinha, chairperson of the National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), stressed on focussing on the disadvantaged sections in the...

Corruption has become a serious problem, defying solutions. To curb it, several measures are needed apart from the Lokpal bill, the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill and the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection of Persons Making the Disclosures Bill, otherwise known as the whistlblowers protection bill. The three bills, in their present form, do not appear capable of achieving the avowed objective. Like the Right to Information Act, these bills...

After allowing swapping of organs, India is working on another landmark step in organ transplantation: a single apex national organization that will procure and distribute human organs. Union health ministry is setting up the autonomous National Organ Procurement and Distribution Organization (NOPDO) at the Centre and 10 State Organ Procurement and Distribution Organization (SOPDO) under the country's new National Organ Transplant Programme (NOTP). Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, West Bengal, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh,...

As you read this, the Unique Identity (UID) programme is likely to have enrolled 200 million Indians. The UID, if it is allowed to, will eventually become the world's largest database of human biometric markers - fingerprints, photo and iris scans. It could go on to 400 million by the end of the year and 600 million by next year. What good is this? If you talk to opponents concerned with civil...

-The Telegraph   The quality of elementary education is falling in rural schools almost two years after education was made a fundamental right in April 2010. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2011, a survey of government and private schools in rural areas conducted by the NGO Pratham, shows a decline in schoolchildren’s “learning outcome levels” compared with the previous year, whether in reading or arithmetic skills.  However, students of private schools have...