The ongoing droughts and water crises in Maharashtra and Gujarat point to the multiple conflicts the beleaguered and scarce resource of water is likely to spark in the coming years. India is today the world’s largest consumer of groundwater, but it is clear that how we extract, harvest, distribute and manage our most precious resource cannot proceed along usual lines. The unsustainable over-extraction is heralding a fall in the water-table and...

-PTI The National Green Tribunal has asked the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests to take expeditious steps to finalise the report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel or any other committee set up to study the environmental sensitivity and ecological significance of the Western Ghats. A Bench, headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar, Chairperson of the tribunal, has granted the Ministry three weeks' time, as a last opportunity, to finalise the...

-The Hindu 'They quit because they are not learning anything in school' With eight million children never having stepped inside a school and 80 million dropping out without completing basic schooling, the United Nations Children's Fund has described the situation as a national emergency and called for equipping the government and civil society to implement the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. "There has been progress in implementation of...

-Outlook A media round table on Right To Education today expressed concern over the learning outcome of children, saying children are not learning the basics of literacy and numerology in classes. Learning assessments show that that for many of the children, who do remain in school, are not learning the basics of literacy and numeracy or the additional knowledge and skills necessary for their all-round development as specified under the Act, participants...

-The Times of India CHENNAI: Only three institutes in the country, all of them Indian Institutes of Technology, feature among the top 100 universities in Asia, according to the first Asia University Rankings released by "Times Higher Education" magazine. While IIT-Kharagpur is ranked 30th, IIT-Bombay is 33rd and IIT-Roorkee 56th, the University of Tokyo secured the pole position with an overall score of 78.3, followed by the National University of Singapore...