-The Hindustan Times Despite constitutional protection, positive discrimination policies and earmarked budgets, India's 104 million tribal people remain among the poorest and most nutritionally deprived social groups. In 2005-06, 54% of tribal children under five years of age were stunted, which is a measure of chronic undernutrition; this is well above the national average of 48%. Studies carried out between 2006 and 2013 in different states reveal that the percentage of...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Rural development minister Chaudhary Birender Singh today held a meeting with senior officials amid indications that the ministry is planning an ordinance to amend the year-old land acquisition law which industry has opposed. Among those who attended the two-hour meeting was Vandana Kumari Jena, secretary, department of land resources. Sources said the rural development ministry was under pressure from the finance and Infrastructure ministries to amend the Right to...

-The Indian Express Under Opposition fire for promulgating three ordinances less than 24 hours after both houses of Parliament were prorogued, the Centre is planning to take the ordinance route once more to effect crucial changes to the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013. Sources in the Prime Minister's Office told The Indian Express that with Assembly elections in Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir...

-The Hindu None of our Teacher Education programmes has ever seriously tried to achieve a clear and convincing enough understanding of what one tries to achieve through education. It always has been a rhetoric of larger aims and working for myopically understood parental and market aspirations All curricula are situated in contexts and are simultaneously guided by ideals. Therefore, an understanding of and a balance between the two is essential. We have succeeded...

-The Indian Express The Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of agricultural households, released last week by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), is the second one ever to be done. The SAS of 2003 was necessitated by the agrarian crisis of the time. Farmer suicides had reached a peak, and the reference year for the survey, 2002-2003, had seen severe drought. The agricultural sector was in crisis, with growth rates slowing to...