-TheWire.in India’s midday meal scheme (MDMS) reaches more than 11 crore children across 12 lakh government schools around the country. Based on a Supreme Court order in 2001, states introduced a cooked meal in schools – replacing the earlier system of monthly “dry rations”. Despite many achievements, the scheme tends to make headlines for the wrong reasons. A recent audit report by the CAG found a number of implementation gaps, including...

-Frontline   Swagata Raha, a senior legal researcher (Consultant) at the Centre for Child and the Law, National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, said the Juvenile Justice Bill, 2015, “incorrectly assumes that children are competent to stand trial as adults”. Currently pursuing Master of Studies in International Human Rights Law at the University of Oxford, Swagata Raha worked extensively on the campaign against the Juvenile Justice Bill and has written extensively...

-The Indian Express When the UPA government passed the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, that laid down in clear terms that the age of consent for sex is 18 years, even then activists had warned against such misuse. THE Supreme Court refused to extend the detention of the juvenile convicted in the 2012 Delhi gangrape saying it has to go by the law as it stands today. Lawmakers...

-Outlook Recent studies point to two areas where NREGS has had an impact — rural education and Naxalite conflict. "Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man."  This rather depressing assessment of the field is the opening sentence of Henry Hazlitt's classic primer, Economics in one lesson. In Hazlitt's view, most economists only measure the immediate impact of their policies. A good economist, Hazlitt contended, looks not merely...

-The Hindu Pune: In 2000, he led a campaign demanding entry for women into the Shani Shingnapur temple. The trail-blazing activism by rationalist firebrand Narendra Dabholkar, who was killed by right-wing elements, and his Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (MANS) to combat the ban on women entering temples was a vital phase in the organisation’s untiring efforts to strive for gender equality in Maharashtra. While the struggle commenced with the usual raucous noises...