Many schools in poorer countries lack adequate water and sanitation facilities, affecting children’s educations and even claiming lives, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns in a new report. “Millions of children in the developing world go to schools which have no drinking water or clean latrines – basic things that many of us take for granted,” said Sigrid Kaag, the agency’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North...

Even as the Right to Education came into effect on Thursday, the countdown began for lakhs of unrecognised schools across the country against whom action can be taken under the new law unless they get themselves regularized within the next three years. The task of enforcing this regularization will be humungous if studies indicating the proliferation of unrecognized schools are to be believed. In 2005, in a survey in seven...

One hardly needs a reminder that the Right to Education is different from the others enshrined in the Constitution, in that the beneficiary cannot demand it nor fight a legal battle when the right is denied or violated.  Now that India's children have a right to receive at least eight years of education, the gnawing question is whether it will remain on paper or become a reality. One hardly needs...

Today, we have reached a historic milestone in our country's struggle for children's right to education. The Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002, making elementary education a Fundamental Right, and its consequential legislation, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, comes into force today. The enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100-year struggle for universalising elementary education. Over the years, the demand...

Increased representation for women can unleash a broader process that can be set in motion by the strength of sheer numbers. One measure of whether it is important to have women in important policy formulation roles is to examine how a largely male-dominated system of government has served women. It turns out that India performs very poorly in this regard. Despite a few heartening examples to the contrary, in general Indian...