-The Indian Express More than four years after the RTE was passed, the state has no handle on the numbers of out-of-school children. The recently released report of the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children, based on a situational analysis of India, opens a Pandora's box on data and methodological issues that plague the estimation of out-of-school children in India. As the report reveals, there is a multiplicity of definitions, sources of data...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Union health ministry is considering a plan to build an email repository of doctors across the country to directly reach out to them with information relating to healthcare, including standard guidelines to treat tuberculosis. The Medical Council of India estimates that India has over 600,000 practising doctors. "I expect most doctors today will have email (addresses)," health minister Harsh Vardhan today said. "Such an email repository would help...

-The Hindu   Research finds drastic consequences India's attempt at a China-type population control policy appears to have had drastic but unintended consequences. Laws enacted by State governments in the late 1990s and 2000s restricting political eligibility to candidates with two or less children did reduce family sizes in those States, but severely affected the sex ratio, a new research has found. Over the period, 11 Indian States passed laws disqualifying persons with more...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: About half of all Indian students were perceived by teachers as lacking the skills required for the class or grade they were entering, despite the same teachers also believing that the learning environment had improved over the last decade. This was revealed in a survey of over 5,000 teachers from schools and institutions of higher education from over 200 cities across the country. The teachers identified...

-The Business Standard Ending open defecation by 2019 will require changing minds, not just allocating money to build latrines for people that will either go unused or not be built at all During Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech, we learned that his Swachch Bharat Mission to eliminate open defecation in India by Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary, would begin in less than two months on October 2. What was...