THE PASSING OF THE Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2008, on July 20 this year, a full seven years after the 86th Amendment to the Constitution stipulated that “the State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of six to fourteen years in such manner as the State may, by law, determine”, should have been an occasion to celebrate. But both...

Is the Right to Education Bill a landmark legislation as it is made out to be? The opinion is divided and it is not an exaggeration that the Bill has disappointed India’s educationists and Civil Society activists alike. To say the least, what got passed in Lok Sabha was a huge compromise from the state’s earlier commitment of providing the country’s children easy and equitable access to quality education without...

Output and Growth     According to the [inside]Economic Survey 2017-18, Volume-2[/inside] (please click here to access): • The growth rates of agriculture & allied sectors have been fluctuating at 1.5 per cent in 2012-13, 5.6 per cent in 2013-14, (-) 0.2 per cent in 2014-15, 0.7 per cent in 2015-16 and 4.9 per cent in 2016-17. • The Gross Capital Formation (GCF) in Agriculture and Allied Sectors relative to Gross Value Added (GVA) in...

KEY TRENDS   • At the national level, the proportion of government schools having facilities like drinking water was 96.39 percent, boys' toilet was 94.64 percent, girls' toilet was 97.03 percent, boundary wall was 60.12 percent, playground was 56.98 percent, ramp was 71.50 percent, CWSN toilet was 19.59 percent, electricity was 56.45 percent and library was 79.36 percent, according to the Unified District Information System For Education (UDISE) 2017-18 (Provisional) *12   • ASER 2019 ‘Early Years’ data shows a clear...