Tamil Nadu offers maximum economic freedom and Bihar the least among 20 of India's big states, according to a study released on Tuesday. The Economic Freedom of the States in India 2011 ranked the states based on the extent of wealth, administrative and social parameters in 2009. The USbased Cato Institute published the rankings in association with Indicus Analytics and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. Both the states retained their positions...

The children of Khatima village couldn't take it anymore. The headmaster in their government school had been turning up drunk for over five years. That is, when he turned up at all. Last year, they finally took matters into their own hands. Activist Devendra Ojha had held a cartooning workshop with them. The comics produced by the children were photocopied and pasted all over the village: behind rickshaws, near the...

The Plan allocation for school education, especially for Right to Education (RTE), has seen a 40 per cent increase over last year. But the actual allocation is only a third of what should have gone for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan under the funds committed under the RTE Act. The RTE commitment of Rs 2.33 lakh crore to implement the Right to Edcuation was approved by the Planning Commission, by the ministry and...

The GoM to determine the norms for coalmine clearance in reserve forests, largely in tribal areas, and the parallel exercise to give back forest lands to tribals is not about the environment, but about forest policy. The divergence of interests between national use of forests, ecological balance and needs of local people should be recognised. However, the tribal affairs ministry is responsible for the Forest Rights Act and the coal...

The Nagla elementary school in this north Indian town looks like many other rundown government schools. Sweater-clad children sit on burlap sheets laid in rows on cold concrete floors. Lunch is prepared out back on a fire of burning twigs and branches. But the classrooms of Nagla are a laboratory for an educational approach unusual for an Indian public school. Rather than being drilled and tested on reproducing passages from...