Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's strong criticism of political India for its gross neglect of elementary education over the decades has revived the debate on the quality of school education and also the scope of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 in addressing the problem of “out-of-school” children, who are estimated to number about 14 crore. Speaking at a university function recently in New Delhi, the...

The Centre, while seeking to recall/modify the July 4 Supreme Court order on the black money issue, has disputed the finding that certain admissions and concessions were made by the government counsel during the course of hearing of the petition filed by the former Union Law Minister, Ram Jethmalani. On July 15, the Centre filed an application for recall of the order (briefly published on July 16). According to the application...

The Indian media have grown rapidly in scale, reach, influence, and revenues. But all stakeholders must realise that the ethical underpinning of professional journalism in the country has weakened and that the corrosion of public life in our country has impacted journalism. So what needs to be done? We have been witness in recent years to rapid, and unprecedented, changes in our society, economy, and polity. These have also transformed the...

A strong Lokpal Bill is necessary to fight corruption, but it cannot become a “supreme body” above Parliament with control over the legislature, executive and judiciary, Sudhakar Reddy, deputy general secretary of the national council of the Communist Party of India (CPI), has said. Speaking at the launch of the anti-corruption campaign by the Left parties here on Saturday, Mr. Sudhakar Reddy said that participation of civil society organisations could not...

The communal violence bill prepared by the National Advisory Council (NAC) seeks fundamentally to change how the government deals with violence against minorities. The bill focuses on religious and linguistic minorities as well the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, but religious minorities are at its heart. The bill has some undeniable strengths, but it suffers from two analytically fatal flaws. First, it places excessive faith in the state machinery. Though...