The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE Act) will be notified on April 1. The Act attempts to address the historical problem of continuing illiteracy as well as the lack of educational opportunities that persist for sections of our population even sixty years after adoption of the Indian constitution. The socio-political, legal and financial aspects of the Act have been much debated and its final form...

The proposed Food Security Bill should adopt a three-pronged strategy that constitutes a Universal Public Distribution System for all, low-cost foodgrains to the needy, and convergence in the delivery of nutrition safety net programmes.  In his latest budget speech, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced: “We are now ready with the draft Food Security Bill which will be placed in the public domain very soon.” Although no official draft has been...

I want you to consider some well-known, oft-repeated facts: * About half of India’s children are malnourished, a record poorer than the world’s poorest area, sub-Saharan Africa. * India is home to a quarter of the world’s hungry — about 230 million people — according to the World Food Programme. * India is the world’s second-largest grower of rice and wheat, and more than 50 million tonnes of foodgrains lie in...

Ten days before it comes into force, the Right to Education Act has been challenged in the Supreme Court as an unconstitutional infringement on the rights of private and minority schools. One of the petitioners’ main complaints is that the act will force these schools to teach up to a fourth of their students free of cost if they come from the neighbourhood. Another is that the schools cannot even pick and...

Though Palakkad district in Kerala, where the Coca Cola plant is situated is considered as the ‘rice bowl of Kerala’, a part of the district falling in the rain shadow region of the Western Ghats is drought prone. Plachimada, where the Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Private Limited (HCBPL) factory was set up had been classified ‘arable’. The villagers are predominantly landless agricultural labourers with almost 80 percent of the population...