-The Indian Express Allegations of saffronisation of school textbooks in BJP-ruled Karnataka have reached the Centre with demands for a thorough probe into “academically poor and saffronised textbooks with many a distortion and misrepresentation”. The Committee for Resisting Saffronisation of Education has submitted a memorandum to the NCERT as well as to Human Resource Development Minister Pallam Raju alleging that the new textbooks released for class V and VIII by the Karnataka...

-Kafila.org The village of Majure, in Chitradurga district, Karnataka, is once again in the news. It made the national headlines in 1998 when dalits in the village lodged a police complaint against members of the dominant Vokkaliga and Lingayat castes for an attack on their hamlet. As a consequence, several people were put behind bars. This time round, however, no formal complaint was lodged. Not that things have improved (rather, one could...

-The Times of India PUNE: Every morning, four-year-old Fatima Makandar dons a neatly ironed yellow and blue uniform, ties her hair with a red ribbon, wears polished black shoes with clean white socks and steps out of her cramped tenement in Upper Indira Nagar in Bibwewadi for View Valley School in Kondhwa. Fatima, a ragpicker's daughter, has crossed a social barrier and is getting good schooling, thanks to the waste picker's...

-Poynter.org It’s not often that two stories about rape — one in India and one here in the U.S. — get so much attention at the same time. What’s striking about the simultaneous stories is how differently journalists are covering them. The case in New Delhi involves a young woman who was raped so brutally that she died. The five men suspected of the rape now face charges of kidnapping, rape and...

The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...