Right to Education a special achievement of our government: Prime Minister Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday said making education a fundamental right was one of the special achievements of his government. “If there is one initiative that our government has taken in these six and a half years in office I consider really special, it is the Right to Education that has now been enshrined in our Constitution,” he said,...

Over the past decade, as crops have failed year after year, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves Naryamaswamy Naik went to the cupboard and took out a tin of pesticide. Then he stood before his wife and children and drank it. "I don't know how much he had borrowed. I asked him, but he wouldn't say," Sugali Nagamma said, her tiny grandson playing at her feet. "I'd tell him: don't worry, we...

The family of murdered RTI activist Satish Shetty today alleged that the police did little to nab the “real culprits” during the months they investigated the murder. This “inaction”, younger brother Sandeep Shetty said, has emboldened land sharks, citing as a case in point Sunday's attack on an associate of Shetty in Talegaon, the very place where Shetty had been murdered on January 13 last year. The case has since been...

The Indian economy is moving back into the fast lane, with agriculture playing a leading role. A new financial review presented by the government in mid-December anticipated economic growth of up to 9% for the year to March 2011, and forecasters believe double-digit expansion is on the cards for later in the year. "Faster growth is expected to continue as agriculture recovers sharply from last year's drought and inflation starts to...

The only economic or social variable that has not moved since 1991 in India is our 93% informal employment in the informal sector. So, while we have smartly and substantially moved the needle on everything from foreign exchange reserves, infant mortality, school enrolment, market capitalisation, foreign investment, and pregnancy deaths, 9 out of 10 of our workers do not work in organised employment. Informal employment—what President Alan Garcia of Peru...