-Business Standard Proposals are in public domain for consultation with stakeholders, coaching institutes are unhappy with suggestion of a watchdog Like Gopal, the hapless protagonist of Chetan Bhagat's bestselling novel Revolution 2020, thousands of students spend fortunes every year at coaching classes, hoping to get through a premier engineering college. The Rs 2.4 lakh crore unregulated segment could, however, soon be under the watchful eyes of a regulator, if the Ashok Misra committee...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government is planning an innovative strategy to use the approximately 4.5 lakh engineering and polytechnic seats that stay vacant every year to teach skill training courses. The plan, which is at a preliminary stage with approvals needed to make it actionable, aims to plug the skills gap, provide options for youth who might be falling out of any kind of professional or academic training, and...

-Economic and Political Weekly A categorical distinction is facing rough weather--that between urban and rural. If we take just agriculture, there is so much of the outside world that comes in not just as external markets but as external inputs. Further, many of our villages barely qualify as rural if we were to take occupation alone. So the earlier line that separated the farmer from the worker in towns is slowly...

-NDTV Our journey takes us to five villages in Sehore district, Madhya Pradesh, to meet families that do not have a toilet at home. Nearly 65 per cent of households in rural areas of the state are without toilets. Prema and Tanu belong to a Scheduled Caste family of daily wagers in Ahlada Kheda. Students of Class 9 and 10, they are exposed to children from different socioeconomic backgrounds at...

-The Hindu Providing people with a modest basic income instead of subsidies would save public revenue With oil prices falling, it was perhaps a good time to fade out fuel subsidies. All subsidies are inefficient and distortionary, and most are regressive. The same could be said of costly public works schemes as well. By contrast, the debate on direct benefit transfers has moved into a more sensible phase, with the posturing criticism of...