The Chennai Corporation will soon commission a study on the household and livelihood profile of 422 slums across the city. While it is to effectively implement the schemes funded under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, the data would also help the civic body assess other welfare measures for those living in slums. The Corporation will float tenders inviting agencies to conduct the survey for gathering the details, including...

The United Nations Development Programme-sponsored 2009 Human Development Report on migration, “Overcoming Barriers: Human mobility and Development” has been widely acknowledged as a path-breaking study on human movement. Shattering the many myths around migration, the report concludes that most migration is in fact beneficial, and calls for supporting policies to ease barriers to free movement. Senior Assistant Country Director, UNDP, K. Seeta Prabhu. discusses the report with The Hindu For...

Tuition is seen as a minimum requirement for any kind of achievement in our academic scene, which is marked by competitive pressure and high aspirations. ONE of the more remarkable features of our education system is the way it has allowed and even encouraged the proliferation of private tuition outside the regular school system. This is something relatively unique to India, as it is not found to this extent even...

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...

The Centre, for the first time, has undertaken a nation-wide survey of slums to profile urban household poverty and the nature of jobs held by those living on society's fringes. The survey will profile slum-dwellers by caste and religion "for properly allocating development schemes, policy-making, project formulation and implementation, and monitoring", according to an official at the Union ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation (Hupa). The survey, being conducted under Hupa,...