-The Hindustan Times The level of food insecurity in India remains stubbornly high for a country that has experienced more than a decade of strong growth, attained robust levels of agricultural production and is a net exporter of food. So the widening gap between the country's economic confidence and the hunger that besets so many of its citizenry is a matter of concern. In the book Feeding India: Livelihoods, entitlements and capabilities,...

-The Times of India LONDON: India, the world's child marriage capital, has once again failed its under-age brides. The country has refused to sign the first-ever global resolution on early and forced marriage of children led by the UN. The resolution was supported by a cross-regional group of over 107 countries, including almost all countries with high rates of child marriage-Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Guatemala, Honduras and Yemen. The resolution floated by...

-PTI New Delhi: To mark the second International Day of the Girl Child, UNICEF on Friday highlighted the power of innovation to get more girls in schools and improve the quality of learning for all children. Millions of girls are still out of school, including 31 million primary school aged girls who are denied quality education and a chance to reach their full potential. According to UNICEF, evidence shows that even a single...

-The Hindu The role of education in reducing poverty is widely recognised but our planners are yet to realise how the impoverished struggle with a learning process that is unresponsive to their needs In a society where poverty is far more common than prosperity, one would expect the implications of poverty for education to be widely recognised. What we find, instead, is that poverty is seldom mentioned directly in policy documents on...

-The Hindu After a long and painful period of neglect, India promises to devote attention to the issue of preparing all children for primary schooling. The draft National Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) policy aims to end the "current laissez faire situation" that has led to the mushrooming of expensive crèches, play schools, nursery schools and so on that adhere to no particular standard. On the other hand, there is...