The rollercoaster ride to success of an illiterate Bihar youth, who launched a radio station and promoted social messages on polio, AIDS and other issues but was arrested for illegally running it, has found place in school textbooks. The story of Raghav, in his mid-20s, and his 'Raghav Radio' has been published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in its book Bharat Mein Samajik Parivartan Evam...

The best advertisement is that which the public pays to receive. So the UPA government will turn the rural job scheme into a diploma course in its universities, teaching students about the pro-poor programme’s achievements against a small fee. The one-year course, which starts from the 2011-12 academic year, will also impart education in the nitty-gritty of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme’s implementation. Fittingly, at the end of it the...

Taking education to sex workers and prisoners in jail in West Bengal, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) has decided to waive fees for them. “To start with, Ignou has decided to select the red light district of Sonagachi here from where 26 sex workers are likely to join courses on healthcare and food and nutrition programmes,” Ignou vice-chancellor V.N. Rajsekharan Pillai said. He said that the Kolkata Regional Centre would...

SINCE THE RELEASE OF THE ECONOMIC Survey, 2010, in February, much has been discussed — but far less debated — on the issue of substituting India’s public distribution system (PDS) with a food coupon-based targeted subsidy programme to benefit the below-poverty-line (BPL) families. As a leading proponent of this programme, the economic adviser to the finance ministry, Kaushik Basu, has gone on record advocating the use of food coupons declaring...

Several recent reports put India at the bottom when it comes to gender equality. It is time for a clearly-spelt new policy on women and development. SHAILAJA CHANDRA  “By and large the attitude of a man towards his wife is possibly worse than his attitude towards his buffalo.”--Colin Gonzalves, Human Rights Lawyer The World Economic Forum, in a report titled the Global Gender Gap 2009, has quantified the magnitude of gender-based...