-The Indian Express The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) released last week forced India's policymakers, yet again, to confront the unfortunate realities of our primary education system. In its 10-year history, ASER has challenged the fundamental assumption of elementary education policy: that the expansion of the schooling system would ensure that children learn. Indeed, in the last decade, while the Centre was able to expand the system through the provision...

-The Hindustan Times The Centre may act against some of the 188 NGOs red-flagged by the Intelligence Bureau for alleged misuse of foreign funds, suspected extremist links and proselytization. These non-government organisations were reported by the internal spy agency and a list sent to the home ministry, documents accessed by HT have revealed. The country's top tax body the central board of direct taxes (CBDT) and enforcement directorate (ED), which tracks foreign funds...

-FirstPost.com In 2001, the Hyderabad-based Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI) was asked by the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government to study the costs of acquisition and distribution of food grains by the Food Corporation of India (FCI). After making a slew of suggestions, the report's author Gautam Pingle said the report was not making recommendations on "the more serious issue - of food grain policy" because it was beyond its scope....

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Health and patients' rights groups have called on the government to resist American pressure that they claimed was aimed at weakening safeguards in India's patent laws that allow drug companies to sell inexpensive generic medicine. Health activists representing patients' rights said they were concerned that bilateral talks on intellectual property rights, to feature during US President Barack Obama's visit to India beginning this weekend, may be rigged against...

-The United Nations Private sector services, such as business and administrative services, and real estate, as well as related industries, will employ more than a third of the global workforce over the next five years, according to new data released by the United Nations labour agency. "Service sector employment will remain the most dynamic with respect to job creation in the next five years," said Raymond Torres, a head researcher of...