-Live Mint At 287 million, India has 37% of the total population of illiterate adults across the world, according a Unesco report New Delhi: The world will miss its goal of universal education by 2015, with millions of children and adults still to be schooled, said a United Nations (UN) body. India has the highest population of illiterate adults, 287 million, 37% of the total population of such people across the world,...

-Frontline Two draft Bills on the Tribal Sub-Plan and the Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan raise hopes of granting these decades-old schemes statutory status and ensuring allocation of funds in the Central and State budgets for their implementation. IN a significant legislative move, the Union government's Ministry of Tribal Affairs released a draft Bill for the implementation of the long-neglected Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP), a special programme mandated by the Planning Commission to benefit the...

In its latest report, the Statistical Year Book, India 2014 conveys that India is clearly on track to attain the MDG-2 (achieve Universal Primary Education) and MDG-8 (develop a global partnership for development). However, the results are either mixed or poor in terms of India's performance in achieving the rest of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The chart below provides the MDG scenario from a bird's eye view.   The new...

-Newsclick.in With sixty percent children malnourished in the state, the implementation of the Integrated Child Development Services, the largest scheme to provide nutrition to children in the country, is nothing but a sham. Sitting outside her semi-pucca house in Bilgram block, Kasturi says, "My children get five fistful of panjiri once a month from the Aanganwadi Centre." Thirty-three year-old Kasturi has never, in her parents' village or her in-law's village seen an...

-Frontline DAVID SANDERS, Professor Emeritus and founding Director of the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) in South Africa, is a specialist paediatrician with postgraduate qualifications in public health. One of the founders of the global public health movement, he has over 30 years' experience in health policy and programme development in Zimbabwe and South Africa, having advised governments as well as organisations such as...