The government on Monday proposed a roadmap for time-bound redressal of grievances under the landmark Right to Education Act. The move comes three weeks after the country's apex watchdog for the law raised concerns about the absence of such a mechanism. The human resource development ministry on Monday discussed with states the proposal to set up a detailed grievance redressal mechanism for the law, with specific authorities and timeframe to...

Three pronouncements made on three consecutive days this month by the Supreme Court of India have brought relief to different groups of economically and socially deprived people. The beneficiaries include children sold out by poor parents to work in circuses as child labour; young men and women determined to get married crossing caste barriers and harassed for that very reason by ‘khap panchayats'; and the hungry poor across the country...

The incidents of children going missing from the capital are showing an increasing trend this year with statistics showing that five minors disappear every day compared to three last year. So far this year, a total of 541 children were either kidnapped or went missing from the capital. This month alone, 164 cases were registered while last month the figure was 166. The latest case was that of one-and-half-year-old Ishaan, son of...

Sharad Pawar says many states had asked him not to ban the pesticide Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is rooting for endosulfan just before the fifth Conference of Parties (COP) of the Stockholm Convention meets in Geneva from April 25 to April 30 to decide the fate of the pesticide. There seems to be a pattern in Pawar’s resistance to banning endosulfan. Replying to a question in the Lok Sabha on February...

Last week, the Supreme Court granted bail to Binayak Sen, the doctor and civil rights activist who had been sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Raipur on the charge of sedition. Sen was charged with being a Naxalite sympathizer, and of acting as a courier for the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The verdict of the lower court had been widely condemned. The proceedings were farcical; with no...