The judgment last week by the Supreme Court, making it mandatory for the government, local authorities and private schools to reserve 25% of their seats for the economically weaker sections, is one more step in making the right to education a reality for Indian children. The road, however, is long and the journey arduous, as there are still millions who face barriers in accessing education. The Right of Children to Free...

BANWARA, India – In the fall of 2006, Gita Devi was pregnant with her sixth child when her family fell on hard times. A severe drought made it more difficult than ever to find farm work here in India’s northeastern plains. The family couldn’t afford food. It was unable to get a government ration card to buy grains and rice at steep discounts, even though it clearly was poor enough to...

-The Business Standard About 240 million more people in ASIa, or 6.5 per cent of the population, could have been lifted out of poverty, had inequality not widened over the past 20 years, roughly the era coinciding with economic reforms in India, the ASIan Development Bank (ADB) said in a report released on Wednesday. “ASIa’s rapid growth is leaving millions behind, causing a widening gap between the rich and the poor that...

Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China, had a sharp, snappy way of putting across what he wanted to say. Some of his eminently quotable quotes include: “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white so long as it catches mice” and “Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious”. But there’s another, less well-known and even more controversial quote also attributed to him: “Let some people...

All schools, barring unaided minority institutions, will have to set ASIde 25 per cent of their seats for disadvantaged sections in the neighbourhood, the Supreme Court ruled today. The top court settled the question by upholding the relevant clause in the right to education law, saying that “advancement of education is a recognised head of charity” and rejecting a slew of petitions filed by several unaided schools. Since the act deals with...