-CivilSocietyOnline.com Kozhikode: Dubai's agriculture minister recently chartered a flight to Kozhikode and, accompanied by a horticulture consultant, headed to the Agriculture Research Station (ARS) at Anakkayam nearby. There the minister, Abdulla Jassim Abdulla M Almarzooqi, placed orders for fruits, spices and ornamental plants. But on his mind was something bigger. He offered free visas and air tickets to the 100 members of the research station's agricultural army, which rather grandly goes...

-The Times of India Amartya Sen is angry, and clearly getting impatient . Having urged Indian policymakers over decades to do more to combat poverty, hunger and illiteracy , the economist is now taking direct aim at what he feels is our continuing apathy as a nation towards the underprivileged. But in his own way - less the firebrand rhetorician and more the gentle but firm academic don that he is....

-The Guardian Half of Indians have no toilet. It's one of many gigantic failures that have prompted Nobel prize-winning academic Amartya Sen to write a devastating critique of India's economic boom The roses are blooming at the window in the immaculately kept gardens of Trinity College, Cambridge and Amartya Sen is comfortably ensconced in a cream armchair facing shelves of his neatly catalogued writings. There are plenty of reasons for satisfaction...

-PTI Panaji: Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar on Monday called the Right to Education (RTE) Act as Union Minister Kapil Sibal's "absolutely foolish policy". "RTE Act is Kapil Sibal's absolutely foolish policy. There are certain parameters in the policy which are wrong," Mr Parrikar told reporters while objecting to the RTE Act's no-detention clause. "The idea of no-detention is good, but there should be good parameters to implement it. After RTE, studying has...

-The Hindu Madurai: No end to doubts raised and clarifications provided with respect to the Act even after three years The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009 stipulates that private schools reserve 25 per cent of seats at the entry level for children belonging to ‘disadvantaged groups' and ‘weaker sections'. The Central Act originally defined a ‘child belonging to a disadvantaged group' as one belonging to...