-The Hindu The Campaign Against Sex Selective Abortion (CASSA) has submitted a memorandum to political parties and the State government seeking steps to improve the child sex ratio and sex ratio at birth. Representatives of the CASSA, Human Rights Foundation and Centre for Child Rights Development, met mediapersons here on Tuesday to explain their demands. “In 2001, the mortality rate for girl children was high in 11 districts. Despite the Pre-Conception and...

-The Pioneer Almost 95.2 per cent of schools are not compliant with the complete set of Right to Education (RTE) infrastructure Indicators. These shocking statistics came to light in the two-day RTE Stocktaking Convention which was recently held. The Convention aimed to address the pending gaps and detect the reasons behind the schools missing out on the deadline to meet the basic standard of education as highlighted by the RTE. The RTE...

-The Times of India Slow implementation of the Right to Education Act raises concern as only a year left to fulfil norms Unhappy with the slow progress in implementing the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, a memorandum was submitted to the Prime Minister last week by theRTE Forum. The RTE Act, which came into force on April 1, 2009, guarantees the provision of free and compulsory education...

One would expect a debate such as the current one on poverty estimates to be conducted with a serious exploration of its various facets. However, instead of a comprehensive, fact-driven exploration, the debate has yielded aspersions on the intellectual honesty of academicians. Although given its electoral connotations, one does expect political biases to creep into the debate, the barrage of criticism hurled at the Planning Commission, over its affidavit in...

-The Wall Street Journal These days, Indian policymakers are debating how to create a vast new food entitlement program. There is talk of poor households struggling to cope with high food prices and malnourishment among their children. What you don’t hear much about, however, is the most tragic and outrageous consequence of India’s failure to feed its people adequately: starvation deaths. India is a nation that prides itself on having been self-sufficient in...