While welcoming the report of the High Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage for India for its comprehensive vision and many well-conceived recommendations, this article focuses on the conditions needed for its promise to bear fruit. Towards this, it explores the political dimension, which comprises the forces and interests that come into play to shape and reconfigure administrative policy and its implementation. We are grateful to Anand Zachariah and Susie...
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4.5% quota for minorities in IITs from this year by R Ravikanth Reddy
There is good news for IIT aspirants from the minority community. The IIT-JEE Admission Committee has decided to implement 4.5 per cent reservation for them within the 27 per cent seats meant for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) from this year. Those minority candidates who had submitted the application forms online and have not mentioned their status can do so on the IIT-JEE website — http://jee.iitd.ac.in/obcminority.php — by giving an undertaking...
More »RTI lessons for Class VIII students unlikely next year
-The Times of India The citizen empowering tool of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, is finding it tough to make an entry into the text books of the state high school syllabus. The AP State Council for Education Research and Training (APSCERT) had accepted the state information commission's proposal to introduce RTI in Class VIII text books in 2010. It was then decided that the lesson on RTI would be...
More »Starvation deaths in Assam Tea Estate
Historians tell us of the colonial era stories of miserable conditions of workers, even bonded labour, in tea plantations of eastern India. However, the situation improved after independence. In the past few decades the tea industry has made steady profits even in worst years of economic downturn. And that is why reports of starvation deaths in tea plantations of Assam are so shocking. An Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) report says that...
More »Aligarh Muslim University's library out of bounds for undergraduate girls by Manash Pratim Gohain
students of the Women's College in Aligarh Muslim University are waging a bitter struggle for a facility their counterparts in other institutions would take for granted-access to the university's central library. Now, in a concession to these undergraduate women students, AMU has decided provided them online access to the catalogue of books. The varsity says the girls can choose the books which would then be issued and delivered to them. The 100-year-old...
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