-PTI AHMEDABAD: In a relief to parents of children studying in private schools, the Gujarat High Court today said the state government's law to regulate fees was constitutionally valid. Rejecting around 40 petitions opposing it, a division bench of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy and Justice V M Pancholi upheld the Gujarat Self Financed Schools (Regulation of Fees) Act, 2017. The court ruled that state legislature is competent and has the authority to...

-IndiaSpend.com So far, only a few states such as Karnataka and Tamil Nadu had made available millets and that too only in certain pockets. The union government proposes to include coarse grains such as jowar (sorghum), bajra (pearl millet) and ragi (finger millet) in the mid-day meal programme in schools and also distribute it through the government subsidised food programme, the public distribution system (PDS), agriculture secretary SK Patnaik said recently. This announcement...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: The Naveen Patnaik government has plans to spice up the midday meal platter by serving fish that officials say will push up its nutritional quotient. The move, if implemented, will be in accordance with the recommendations of the Odisha State Food Commission that had submitted its report to the government last month. The commission's report had suggested measures required to strengthen the nutritional content of food served at schools and...

-Down to Earth Jean Dreze on why he prefers a solidarity society, rather than a welfare state * Are you actually an advocate of the welfare state? Ideally, I would prefer to think in terms of a solidarity society rather than welfare state, for two reasons. First, private non-profit institutions can play a very useful role in the social sector. In many countries, some of the best schools and health centres are run...

-The Hindu If we oppose every solution to the problem of air pollution, how will we ever breathe clean air, asks the environmentalist Environmentalist Sunita Narain has been fighting for clean air for decades. The Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, with which she has been associated and now serves as director general, led the shift to compressed natural gas in Delhi, to reduce air pollution. Ms. Narain is on the statutory...