-The Times of India Neetu Meena, 16, in a pale blue uniform, wants to become a nurse. She is the first girl in her family to get this far at school. Schooling is not only free, she gets a scholarship and a bike to come in to the senior secondary government school in Jhar village, Bassi, near Jaipur. At the school, a blackboard lists about twenty schemes, from special scholarships for girls,...

-IBNLive.com The Report 'Democracy in India: A Citizen's Perspective' tries to assess people's understanding and perception towards democracy. It is a part of a comparative study (State of Democracy in South Asia) of five South Asian countries that include, besides India - Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The first round of the SDSA was conducted in 2005 and a report based on it was published by Oxford University Press in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Records of death penalty convicts who have been executed since independence have gone missing from many prisons with the National Law University (NLU), conducting a first of its kind study, able to confirm data related to 755 executions since 1947. "Some prison authorities have written to us that either the records have been lost or destroyed by termites," NLU director Anup Surendranath told TOI, who is...

-FAO September’s post-2015 development agenda summit of heads of state and government may well attract global headlines this year, but much of the really significant work is being executed behind the scenes. As statisticians lock heads to come up with a workable indicator framework to measure and monitor the ambitious Agenda, Vikas Rawal, Associate Professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, describes the make-up...

-Hindustan Times Two years after its unanimous passage, the landmark National Food Security Act, which guarantees cheap foodgrains to two-thirds of Indians, remains largely unimplemented, research by the Hindustan Times shows. Only seven states have implemented its core provisions fully (see graphic). Five others have partially executed it, while the NDA government has stalled its rollout in the remaining states, extending the deadline for implementation thrice so far. Another extension looks likely...