-DNA While the Supreme Court of India's recent judgement to implement the Right to Education (RTE) Act has put private schools in a quandary, Gujarat government too is facing logistic, administrative and as social problems in execution of this Act. State education minister Ramanlal Vora on Wednesday spoke on these issues, elaborating that they are not only administrative but social too. A major hindrance in implementation of RTE Act is sharing of expenses...

A Union finance ministry panel is likely to call Bengal’s top officials next week to discuss the request for a debt recast. This will be preceded by a meeting of a Trinamul Congress parliamentary delegation with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee. Bengal, Kerala and Punjab have been officially dubbed debt-stressed states. A panel headed by expenditure secretary Sumit Bose has been tasked to look into the problems of...

A Comptroller and Auditor-General of India report has expressed dismay over the rising share of funds disbursed by various ministries to local bodies and NGOs in 2010-11. The CAG report on the accounts of the Union government was tabled in Parliament on Tuesday. "An analysis of plan expenditure revealed that 77% of the total plan expenditure was in the form of grants-in-aid payment,'' the report stated. "In five of the ten...

We need a properly defined strategy to integrate poorer children into schools For millions of children, it is a struggle to get to school, to stay in school and to make sense of what is happening in the classroom. After visiting many homes in rural and urban India, I have realised that learning to read without decent instruction, without enough nutrition, without electricity and water, without a place to keep your...

-Tribune News Service Notwithstanding the marginal decline in spendings under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) over the past two years, Himachal has the best performance indicators, putting it in the league of top-performing states. The total expenditure under the scheme came down from Rs 556.55 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 516.34 crore in 2010-11 and further fell to Rs 509.43 crore in the last financial year. However, the number...