-PTI Expressing "extraordinary frustration" over India denying market access to the American poultry, US is gearing to drag it to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), with top lawmakers pressing the Obama Administration to act fast against New Delhi in this regard.  The indication in this regard came from a top trade official of the Obama Administration, who told lawmakers on Wednesday that the US has taken similar action with the Chinese in...

Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...

The last eight years have seen a staggering rise in the number of children studying in English-medium schools across the country. Data on school enrolment for 2010-11 shows that, for the first time, the number of children enrolled in English-medium schools from Classes I to VIII has crossed the two crore mark - a 274% rise since 2003-04.  For the fourth year in a row, English is the second-largest medium of...

-Live Mint High on hype, the budget speech of the Union finance minister today is merely a statement of account. As India’s economy diversifies—with the private sector playing an increasingly important role—this annual feature has assumed much lower salience. Not only have fiscal policies lost the space they enjoyed in earlier years, even major policy announcements are restricted to being mere statements of account. Examples from other arenas include “activism” on...

India has not reported a single polio case over the past one year, but Bihar has gone a step further by maintaining a clean slate for the past 16 months. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently deleted India from the list of polio endemic countries, the first time that the country has been ticked out of the map. The last polio case in India was reported from Howrah district of Bengal on...