CABE approves drafting of law to check malpractices in schools The provision of free and compulsory education will soon be extended up to Class X. A proposal to this effect was approved at a meeting of the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) — the highest decision-making body on education in the country — held here on Tuesday. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, provides for...

-The Indian Express   Compulsory education defeats its own purpose if isn’t sufficiently compulsory and long enough. India has been a late entrant into the community of nations that offer their children free and compulsory education up to a basic level, for a certain minimum number of years. The Right of All Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, passed in 2009, entitled every child between 6 and 14 years of...

-The Telegraph   A World Health Organisation panel’s decision to tag mobile phone radiation as “possibly carcinogenic” has set off one of the most intense debates involving an everyday device that touches the lives of 5 billion people worldwide. The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified electromagnetic radiation in the category of agents such as lead, styrene, even coffee, for which there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in...

Cash transfers are now suggested by many as a silver bullet for addressing the problems that plague India’s anti-poverty programmes. This article argues instead for evidence-based policy and informed public debate to clarify the place, prospects and problems of cash transfers in India. By drawing on key empirical findings from academic and grey literature across the world an attempt is made to draw attention to three aspects of cash transfers...

The current perception that cash transfers can replace public provision of basic goods and services and become a catch-all solution for poverty reduction is false. Where cash transfers have helped to reduce poverty, they have added to public provision, not replaced it. For crucial items like food, direct provision protects poor consumers from rising prices and is part of a broader strategy to ensure domestic supply. Problems like targeting errors...