-Economic and Political Weekly     This paper presents results from a larger household-, school-, and institutional-level study on the role of the private sector and the early phase of implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. While some of the controversies about the RTE Act were reported in the media and publicly discussed, this paper reports data from semi-structured interviews with key education officials and implementers,...

-Tehelka   It is time India had a Good Samaritan law  It has been more than a year since the Nirbhaya rape case stirred the nation. Apart from the brutality inflicted upon the victim what else became a stigma for our society was the fact that no one came to the victim's rescue when the two were lying on the street naked and grievously injured. Of course people did cross them in luxurious...

-The Hindu   When an electoral system structurally discriminates against particular categories such as persons with disabilities, it is tantamount to a failure of the democracy as a whole The citizens of India are in the process of casting their votes in what is being widely hailed as the largest election in human history. By sheer size, the 16th Lok Sabha elections signal a triumph not only for India, but for democratic exercises...

-The Indian Express   Contrary to the popular narrative, the second green revolution is underway. A dramatic turnaround of agriculture, India's most important sector, has gone largely unheralded. Contrary to the popular narrative, agriculture has been transformed in the last 10 years. The second green revolution is underway. At the end of the second tenure of the UPA and after a decade of persistent work, we are witnessing record agricultural outputs for every...

-The Times of India   Sometimes, a shard of reality can raise serious doubts about what looks like a grand feat. A small study of water samples from urban and rural households declared as getting drinking water from "improved" sources has shown that about 42% of urban and 60% of rural households were actually getting contaminated water. About half of the surveyed anganwadis where small children and pregnant mothers were taken care...