India launches on Thursday the task of counting its teeming billion-plus population, with 2.5 million people set to fan out over the country to begin work for the 2011 census. The exercise has formidable challenges -- coverage of a vast geographical area, left-wing rebels and separatists, widespread illiteracy, and people with a bewildering diversity of cultures, languages and customs. "The census is a means of evaluating once in every 10...

Today, we have reached a historic milestone in our country's struggle for children's right to education. The Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002, making elementary education a Fundamental Right, and its consequential legislation, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, comes into force today. The enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100-year struggle for universalising elementary education. Over the years, the demand...

Increased representation for women can unleash a broader process that can be set in motion by the strength of sheer numbers. One measure of whether it is important to have women in important policy formulation roles is to examine how a largely male-dominated system of government has served women. It turns out that India performs very poorly in this regard. Despite a few heartening examples to the contrary, in general Indian...

Reports should be sent to all ‘climate sceptics' during the review process  Introduce the “Right to Information” to the U.N.'s climate change system, India has suggested to the body (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) charged with bringing credibility and accountability to the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), the climate science panel which has been in the eye of a storm over the last few months. India wants...

With five years to go before the deadline for halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) warn in a report released today that without stepped-up efforts, nearly one billion people will be overlooked. “We all recognize the vital importance of water and sanitation to human health and well-being and their role...