The ongoing pre-school admissions have forced many a city school into a tight corner. Institutions are being driven to do a tightrope walk between the demands of the Right to Education (RTE) Act and the unending pressure from political parties to admit students of their choice. The RTE aims at creating a level playing field for all children by making it mandatory for schools to admit a percentage of underprivileged...

To keep a check on the implementation of various Centrally-sponsored schemes, a meeting of the District Vigilance Monitoring Committee of the Congress was held under the chairmanship of local Congress MP Pradeep Majhi on Wednesday. District Collector Sibabrata Dash, PD, DRDA, Dhruba Charana Panchbhaya, Executive Engineers of RD, RWSS, SOUTHCO, AEs of PWD, MI and LI and other district officers, besides members of the committee,were present. Detailed discussions on the various Centrally-sponsored...

And you thought you could get information from the State using the RTI Act? Take your place in the line behind thousands of frustrated citizens The government is considering changes to the Right To Information Act (RTI) that activists feel could dilute the power of the Act. Former Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan has recommended protecting the judiciary from RTI queries apparently on grounds that the move would “erode” the...

An empirical analysis of the microfinance industry shows that the recommendations of the Malegam committee would have significantly more detrimental consequences than have been anticipated in the report. The microfinance exchange (www.mixmarket.org) is the most comprehensive data source for MFIs across the world. Table 1 displays the information on several parameters of Indian MFI performance for 2009. Column 2 displays the average values of performance parameters across 88 Indian MFIs....

Thousands of children and women die every year in India due to lack of access to basic healthcare. Why is it that, in the Mecca of medical tourism, the poor continue to be denied the right to health? A national television channel had a 30-minute special recently on how private hospitals are denying free medical treatment to poor patients. Under a quota, private hospitals are expected to provide medical treatment...