* Secondary education is critical in breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty. * The number of secondary school students is expected to increase from 40 to 60 million over the next decade. * India needs to prepare now for this expansion and improve the quality of secondary education provided. In today’s global knowledge economy, education plays a vital role in determining a country’s economic growth and its people’s standards of living. Importantly,...
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A candle in the wind by P Sainath
In Maharashtra, where issues hurl themselves at you, the Opposition failed to mount a strong campaign on a single one of them. The front rows of the Mumbai-Nagpur flight are usually the province of the political class: MLAs to MPs, ministers and fixers. This time, though, quite a few of the occupants were celebrities: television and film stars, major and minor, middling and mediocre. It wasn’t the T-20 cricket match in...
More »The winter of our austerity by P Sainath
Growing numbers of elected representatives fund their poll campaigns with corporate backing. And growing numbers of people with a big business background have ventured directly into the electoral arena. Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid’s call for restraint, however mild, on the CEO feeding frenzy at the compensation trough, seems the least objectionable statement made by a Minister in months. (Contrast this, for example, with the Agriculture Minister’s warning that people...
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KEY TRENDS • According to The State of the World's Children 2019 report, the proportion of children under 5 years who are either stunted, wasted or overweight was 54 percent for India in 2015, 49 percent for Afganistan, 46 percent for Bangladesh in 2014, 43 percent for Nepal in 2016, 43 percent for Pakistan in 2018, 40 percent for Bhutan in 2010, 32 percent for Maldives in 2009, 28 percent for Sri Lanka and 50...
More »Access to Justice
KEY TRENDS • In 2021 India had a total of 1,319 prisons housing 5,54,034 prisoners as of that year end. The actual capacity was 4,25,609, which means that Indian prisons were overcrowded by 30.2 percent in 2021. ## • In 2020 India had a total of 1,306 prisons housing 4,88,511 prisoners as of that year end. The actual capacity was 4,14,033. The over crowding in Indian prisons in 2020 was 18 percent. ## • In 2019 India had...
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