-The Hindu   Kanyashree Prakalpa provides scholarship to girls from economically-backward backgrounds Kolkata: Kanyashree Prakalpa, a West Bengal government scheme that provides scholarship to girls from economically-backward backgrounds, has been given international recognition by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) and UNICEF. State representatives have been invited to the Girl Summit 2014 in London, in June, and talk about the scheme to a global audience. The conditional cash transfer scheme to school...

-The Times of India   MUMBAI: The landscape of school education has for long promised a variety of options. Almost half-a-dozen school boards-local, national and international-offer Indian students a choice of academic algorithms for careers ahead. But of them all, CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), which was largely designed for those who moved home and could not be loyal to a state board, is picking up popularity across the nation. In 1996-97,...

-The Hindu   On the first anniversary of the Uttarakhand disaster, here's a look at issues plaguing the fledgling state. On June 16, it will be a year since Uttarakhand experienced its worst natural disaster. It was also a year of loss, of grief, of recovery and of resilience. While those affected continue to cope and rise, we need to look beyond the disaster in order to unravel the contradictions and challenges that...

-Down to Earth   Most severely and consistently excluded groups are women, Adivasis, Muslims and the disabled, report confirms A recent report by a Delhi NGO undermines government claims on reaching welfare schemes to the needy and disadvantaged sections of society. The report, titled The India Exclusion Report 2013-14, says the government has failed miserably in providing equal access to public goods to the most disadvantaged groups. The report, prepared by Delhi-based Centre for...

-The Hindu Business Line     A government run by a bevy of economists with no sense of the ground reality made mistakes. Some really big ones As the new government settles down to tackle the myriad problems confronting it, it's worth taking a quick glance at the principal reasons for the spectacular unravelling of the UPA-2 government. A defining characteristic of UPA-2 was that it was led by an economist and supported by prominent...