-Economic and Political Weekly     Illiteracy levels are high across all categories of disability and very high for children with visual, multiple and mental disabilities compared to national averages. Generating awareness that the disabled have full Rights to appropriate education in mainstream schools and that it is the duty of those involved in administration at every level, including schools, to ensure that they have access to education is of utmost importance. Ranjita Dawn...

-Down to Earth   Officials admit that MGNREGS and rural road development programmes suffered shortcomings in UPA regime Senior officials of ministry of rural development have gone into a huddle following questions regarding the performance of various ministries thrown by Narendra Modi, who will take oath as prime minister on May 26. The cabinet secretary has asked secretaries of different ministries to prepare a power point presentation on why benefits from a number of...

-Down to Earth   India needs second-generation reforms in environmental governance to protect environment and community Rights and reduce transaction costs for industry After more than two years of flip-flops by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), the Supreme Court (SC) gave a deadline of April 30, this year to the ministry to start the process of setting up a national environmental regulator under the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, with offices...

-The Business Standard   Policy must target faster growth in labour-intensive sectors It was reported on Wednesday that a sample of large manufacturing companies saw their workforce grow at an average rate of almost three per cent every year over the past decade. Putting aside technical niceties such as the representativeness of the sample, to the extent that the companies covered are mostly market leaders in their respective sectors, this statistic is very...

-IPS News   ATTAPPADI, India, May 4 2014 (IPS) - The death of a 10-day-old girl last November in the Attappadi tribal belt of Kerala, one of India's best performing states in terms of human development indices, shows how the country's battle against child mortality is far from won. The infant's mother, Saraswathy, a 20-year-old from the Kurumba tribe, was admitted to a government hospital, and delivered the next day. At 1.8 kg,...