The anti-corruption movement has enabled the Indian middle class to feel smug about itself. Its members have gone through a vast range of emotions during the last two decades, from self-hatred to self-righteousness. Liberalisation of the economy has created for this class an excitement of many kinds. It has meant the freedom to pursue the quest for wealth without guilt and, at the same time, it has meant feeling set...

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has proposed social audits for the centre's big-ticket welfare programmes running under different ministries, on the lines of the scrutiny that he recently mandated for the flagship rural jobs scheme. "The concept has the potential to revolutionise the system. If we can have social audits for three-four major social sector schemes, it will change the way the country functions," Ramesh said. If the proposal is...

On Friday, the Prime Minister launched the Shiksha Ka Haq Abhiyan — a yearlong nationwide campaign for promoting the Right to Education (RTE). As these efforts gain ground, the country faces one important choice: should elementary education be delivered through the current model, which focuses on the expansion of schooling through a top-down, centralised delivery system? Or should we use the RTE as an opportunity to fundamentally alter the current...

Government officials went gaga in schools over Global Handwashing Day on October 15, but the Supreme Court ruling on October 18 that directed all states to come up with permanent toilets in every cradle by December 31, 2011, has left them cold. Why? The first they knew was tokenism. The second is a Herculean task. There are no functional toilets in more than half of Jharkhand’s 40,000 government schools. The apex court bench...

-The Telegraph   Bengal education minister Bratya Basu today said the state government would next month notify rules to implement the right to education act, a requirement for central assistance to set up elementary schools. Basu, who was here for a conference of state education ministers on the one-and-a-half-year-old law, said the rules were “almost ready”. “We will notify the rules by November. Then we will demand the additional grants that we have not...