The United Nations marked World Teachers’ Day today with top officials calling on governments to make up a projected deficit of over 10 million teachers by 2015 and stressing the crucial role teachers play in recovery from natural disasters and conflict. “Without sufficient numbers of well-trained and professionally motivated teachers, we risk falling short of the promise made 10 years ago at the World Education Forum to the world’s children and...

  The sea change that India’s national scheme for rural employment guarantee has accomplished is hard to fathom, its vastness touching the lives or more than 100 million people. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005 (NREGA, subsequently renamed after Mahatma Gandhi, or MGNREGA) was a landmark in Indian legislation. Under the act, as of April 2008, for the first time in India’s history, all rural citizens have a legal right...

The Sonia Gandhi-led NAC, the political interface between the Congress party and the UPA government, is likely to “listen to the government’s side” before finalizing its recommendations for the legislation The prospects for legislation on food security brightened as the National Advisory Council (NAC) may consider a compromise with the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) over the terms of the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA). The Sonia Gandhi-led NAC, the political interface...

Exposed, untreated excrement can kill by the million. One of the hardest-won UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is a 2015 target of halving the proportion of those without sustainable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Even if achieved, the target would still leave some 500 million on the planet without this basic requirement for survival and dignity. As many as 79 per cent of rural and 46 per...

Trade unions and labour rights activists blame the high suicide rate in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on the practices of the garment industry. TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacturers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of...