Court settles the class issue, but the real challenges of RTE have to be met The debate over the Right to Education is beginning to display characteristic symptoms of Indian debates. Elites are inventing specious arguments to condone the economic apartheid in the current system. But India’s self-appointed anti-elites are often even more elitist. They are more fixated on taking down elites a peg or two rather than intelligently fixing real...

-The Business Standard Petrol decontrol has become a farce It will soon be two years since petrol was decontrolled, but few will happily celebrate this second birthday. The government-controlled oil companies that dominate the fuel market continue to sell petrol way below the market-determined price, exactly as was the case in the pre-decontrol era. The promise made then to decontrol diesel prices and allow periodic adjustment in prices of kerosene and liquefied...

Accessible curriculum, teacher training a must in schools, say activists Poorva Subramanium is barely 10 years old, but has learnt an important lesson in life — not to trouble her parents when they come out of the schools they have been visiting these days. “It is frustrating. No school wants to admit her. She is good at shapes, colours and can also read,” says her mother, showing her report card from...

-The Hindustan Times   With the Supreme Court upholding the constitutional validity of Right to Education Act, the government today dismissed suggestions that the burden which private schools will have to bear to implement it will be passed on to the students. The RTE Act mandates the schools to provide free education upto 25 per cent of the students from economic weaker section between 6 to 14 years of age.   "I do not...

Progressive strengthening of public facilities is the only way to reach medical services to the population as a whole. “The best form of providing health protection would be to change the economic system which produces ill health, and to liquidate ignorance, poverty and unemployment. The practice of each individual purchasing his own medical care does not work. It is unjust, inefficient, wasteful and completely outmoded ... In our highly geared, modern...