The Centre plans to open over 1,000 residential schools for girls in backward and remote areas as part of its plan to universalise education. The national sample survey has found out that over 81 lakh children aged 6 to 13 years remain out of school and that most of them are girls. The human resource development ministry has told the finance ministry it wants to set up 1,073 new Kasturba Gandhi Balika...
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Govt survey shows the sorry state of Muslims
Muslims' enrolment at secondary level of education is less than that of the scheduled castes, a government survey has indicated. Giving this information in Rajya Sabha in a written reply, Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said that the report of 64th Round (2007-08) of national sample survey (NSS) indicates that Muslims' enrolment at secondary level is 10.2 per cent of the total enrolments. The survey said that the same for the scheduled...
More »A very hungry nation by Rukmini Shrinivasan
Independent India's greatest failing must be its inability to feed its people. With 42 per cent of all children malnourished, 56 per cent of women anaemic, and the country ranked 65th out of 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, the report card of the state on nutrition must have an F. Most disturbing is the fact that things have got worse over time. In the first half of the...
More »Insufferable
Governments in India — Centre and states — spend around one per cent of the country's GDP on health. Only five countries — Burundi, Myanmar, Pakistan , Sudan and Cambodia — have a lower figure than this. But private spending on the crucial sector is 4.2 per cent of GDP, among the top 20 countries in the world. Within this private spend, employers pay for about 9 per cent and...
More »Class Struggle
The success of programmes like the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) in getting most children enrolled at the primary level has created the illusion that the government is now finally getting down to business and boldly financing education. Spending on education quadrupled between 1990-91 and 2000-01 . Since 2004-05 , the combined expenditure on education by the Centre and states has increased at a blistering...
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