The apex court upholds an order allowing students to inspect their answer sheets but makes discomfiting observations on the scope of the RTI Act. IN 2008, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) rejected an application filed by a candidate under the Right to Information Act for the inspection and re-evaluation of his Secondary School Examination answer books. The reason cited was that the CBSE shared a fiduciary relationship with...

A group of people, with placards showing Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, staged a demonstration in Delhi a few days ago against Anna Hazare's proposals on the Lokpal and the methods used by his team. More often than not, Dalits look with suspicion on any attempt to tamper with the Constitution. Team Anna has, however, suggested that its Lokpal bill would benefit Dalits more than anyone else. This led me to look...

-The Hindu   In his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made two important announcements, both relating to education. One affirmed the government's intention to improve the quality of education at various levels and appoint an Education Commission to go into the issues. The other outlined a plan to universalise secondary education as a follow-up to the enactment of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE), 2009...

While his means maybe Gandhian, his demands are certainly not. If what we're watching on TV is indeed a revolution, then it has to be one of the more embarrassing and unintelligible ones of recent times. For now, whatever questions you may have about the Jan Lokpal Bill, here are the answers you're likely to get: tick the box — (a) Vande Mataram (b) Bharat Mata ki Jai (c) India is...

-The Business Standard   Much depends on a strong implementation framework but the imposition of a cap by the Planning Commission could lead to arbitrary exclusions. Himanshu Assistant Professor of Economics, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University The methodology, which is based on the framework suggested by the Saxena Committee, uses indicators that have been refined using a large-scale pilot survey There are over 400 million poor (the number varies depending on which estimate you...