Bihar Government's programme of distributing bicycles to school girls may be a modest intervention but is leading to big changes. A new research-based paper, brought out in August 2013, corroborates the success of the programme and testifies that it is leading to improved school enrollment of girls and arresting their dropout rates (See links below to read full paper and earlier studies on the subject).   Based on econometric and statistical models,...

-Outlook Shimla: Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh today launched Rajiv Gandhi Ann Yojana under the Food Security Scheme in the state. Of the state's 68 lakh population, about 37 lakh would be benefited by the scheme, Singh said after handing over ration bags to 104-year-old Mast Ram and Vidya Devi (70) of Sunni area of the district at a function at Ridge maidan here. Beneficiaries under the scheme would get three kgs...

-The New Indian Express In 1948 when the United Nations passed the covenant ensuring the right to food, vis-à-vis the right to proper livelihood, to which India became a signatory, it did not envisage that the whole issue would be caught up in such an imbroglio - political and economic - as one witnesses today. The original covenant in article 25 ensures the "right to work and livelihood" and right to...

-The Hindu The UPA seems to have forgotten that the country's trade commitments, including to the WTO, stand in the way of its implementing the Food Security Ordinance The last time I began an essay with the words "in this era of gloBalisation," in high school, even my teacher winced at the cliché. In junking the phrase, however, we may have forgotten its import too. The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) certainly seems...

-The Indian Express   How Chhattisgarh became a sanctuary, and then a laboratory, for Naxals Some time ago, Chhattisgarh hit the headlines because of a Maoist attack on state Congress leaders, in which V.C. Shukla and Mahendra Karma died. Since then, the Congress has accused the BJP government of a conspiracy, and some BJP leaders have accused former chief minister Ajit Jogi of being part of a conspiracy himself. Politicising this tragic episode...