-The Hindu Govt. trying to broker deal with Congress, promises changes in land ordinance Rejuvenated by the BJP's rout in the Delhi Assembly elections and Nitish Kumar's return as Chief Minister of Bihar, the Opposition, a day ahead of Parliament's budget session, remained unwilling to co-operate with the government, especially on the passage of the ordinances that are priority on the government's legislative agenda. At an all-party meeting convened by Parliamentary Affairs Minister...

-Oxfam Blog Vanita Suneja, Oxfam India's Economic Justice Lead, argues that India can't progress until it tackles rural poverty. This entry was posted on 3 February 2015. More than 800 million of India's 1.25 billion people live in the countryside. One quarter of rural India's population is below the official poverty line - 216 million people. A search for economic justice for a population of this magnitude is never going to be...

-The Indian Express The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) released last week forced India's policymakers, yet again, to confront the unfortunate realities of our primary education system. In its 10-year history, ASER has challenged the fundamental assumption of elementary education policy: that the expansion of the schooling system would ensure that children learn. Indeed, in the last decade, while the Centre was able to expand the system through the provision...

-Economic and Political Weekly The key to improving the quality of healthcare services in India and reducing costs at the same time can be found by enacting legislation which lays down minimum standards of patient care. In the absence of such standards and the reluctance of health insurance companies to standardise either price or quality, healthcare services continue to be expensive and of doubtful quality. Developing standards of patient care by...

-The Hindustan Times Despite constitutional protection, positive discrimination policies and earmarked budgets, India's 104 million tribal people remain among the poorest and most nutritionally deprived social groups. In 2005-06, 54% of tribal children under five years of age were stunted, which is a measure of chronic undernutrition; this is well above the national average of 48%. Studies carried out between 2006 and 2013 in different states reveal that the percentage of...