It is essential for India to raise the level of public expenditure in education to ensure quality. THE failure of the Indian state more than six decades after Independence to provide universal access to quality schooling and to ensure equal access to higher education among all socio-economic groups and across gender and region must surely rank among the more dismal and significant failures of the development project in the country....

The Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs “must become more than a post office: it must become a genuine nodal agency for issues concerning the welfare of the tribal communities,” National Advisory Council (NAC) member and Rajya Sabha MP Ram Dayal Munda said here on Wednesday at the conclusion of a three day conference of the All India Adivasi Mahasabha at the Talkatora Indoor Stadium here. Focussing attention on land alienation and...

The new bribery revelations, a rigged process to import reactors and safety-related concerns must lead to the long-blocked scrutiny of the nuclear deal by Parliament. The world's worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl raises troubling questions about India's plans for a huge expansion of its nuclear power programme through reactor imports. Given its low per-capita energy consumption, India must generate far more electricity to economically advance. So it needs more nuclear-generated power....

An empirical analysis of the microfinance industry shows that the recommendations of the Malegam committee would have significantly more detrimental consequences than have been anticipated in the report. The microfinance exchange (www.mixmarket.org) is the most comprehensive data source for MFIs across the world. Table 1 displays the information on several parameters of Indian MFI performance for 2009. Column 2 displays the average values of performance parameters across 88 Indian MFIs....

With the order of district deputy registrar Harishchandra Hussey to 16 Agriculture Produce Marketing Committees in 16 talukas to submit a report on the details of cotton purchase made by them during the current season, the spree of buying cotton from door to door in the villages by the private players is set to stand exposed. The price of cotton has increased to Rs 6,000 per quintal in recent past. Expecting...