-The Times of India   The RTE Act is an opportunity to break gender, caste, class and community barriers that threaten to damage the social fabric of our democracy and create fissures that could be ruinous to the country, writes Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal. The Supreme Court judgment upholding the constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act has once again focused public attention on education....

In 2010, Andhra Pradesh witnessed a series of suicides. These were not cases of farmers' suicides—a regular occurrence in the state which continues to be in the grip of an agrarian crisis. The victims in these cases happened to be the poorest of the poor; most of them illiterate dalits and adivasis. The first information reports (FIRs) of the police reveal that most of the suicides were due to coercive...

India's efforts to produce and supply life-saving drugs at affordable prices face challenges from multinational companies trying to “evergreen” their patents. THE average life expectancy across the globe has increased from around 30 years a century ago to over 65 years today. This has been made possible in large part by modern medicine. Never before in history have humans had access to such an array of medicines and devices to...

Left anxious by the Adarsh housing society scam and the course of the investigation into it, top bureaucrats have urged the chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to introduce a mechanism whereby law enforcement agencies have to first seek the permission of higher authorities before taking action against a civil servant. Last week, chief secretary Ratnakar Gaikwad along with senior office bearers of the IAS association-including finance secretary Sudhir Shrivastav, forest secretary Pravinsinh...

This is for you, newly-weds. If you delay that little parcel of joy by over two years, another parcel is yours. A crisp parcel of notes. According to a scheme to be launched under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), the government will reward newly-weds with a cash prize of Rs 500 if they don’t have children in the first two years of their marriage. That’s not all. If they want, a couple can...