The Right to Education Act, which lacks a transformational vision, is geared to preparing foot soldiers for the global market. THE most encouraging and delightful news regarding school education in India since the pro-market reforms began in 1991 came from Erode district in Tamil Nadu recently. To be sure, it is neither about the World Bank-sponsored District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) of the 1990s nor about the internationally funded and...

The state is not serious about the need for a robust programme of elementary teacher education to realise the right to education. IN India today it is difficult to decide how the agenda for teacher education and its reform can be taken forward. The Right to Education will succeed only if teachers are able to work to ensure that all children do become educated by attending school; effectively, this means...

ASHOK AGARWAL, a Senior Advocate practising in the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court, has been litigating for the right of education, primarily for those belonging to the weaker sections of society. In fact, even before the actual enactment of the Right to Education Bill, he had campaigned forcefully among policymakers to reinforce the link between out-of-school children and child labour. He was involved in several rounds of discussions...

The State's public education system faces the threat of dilution from several quarters. WHEN a national law is finally in place to ensure that not a single child is out of school, there is a growing concern in Kerala, which already has a well-established, though languishing, public education system, about the United Democratic Front (UDF) government's moves to sanction a large number of private, unaided schools. The decision to issue no...

-The Indian Express   A study sponsored by the Union Home Ministry has recommended that Naxal sympathisers should be "left alone" to the confinement of seminar halls rather than persecuting them. "Distinction needs to be made between Naxal activists and the cheerleaders, between incitement and advocacy and between criminal conspiracies and ideological sympathises. While the state can go all out against the Naxal overground activists, alleged persecution of the cheerleaders would provide...