-The Indian Express   RTE amendment is laudable, but HRD ministry should look after special education Last month, I attended several meetings on Right to Education (RTE) and, in particular, the education of children with special needs — and I found the usual lack of understanding about their needs. What is special education? What is inclusive education? And what is the difference between the two? These are issues that only a few countries...

-Live Mint Latest houselisting data demonstrates a visible growth in the material well-being of the two groups Indians, all of them, across class and caste, traded up over the past decade, a period of rapid and record economic growth—that’s the counter-intuitive message in the latest update to Census 2011. According to the so-called houselisting data released by the census, scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) have, like the rest of the country,...

The OBC lobby within Congress blocked the government proposal to enhance 'creamy layer' for reservations to Rs 6 lakh, protesting it was on the lower side. The resistance prompted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to refer the issue for consultations.  The fresh look may be handed over to a group of ministers (GoM) or be done by social justice ministry that had moved the Cabinet note. Revised every four years, the 'creamy...

-The Indian Express Jairam Ramesh’s criticism of NREGA highlights that a rights-based approach to poverty reduction cannot work without improving implementation The clamour for the right to social pensions is another attempt to deal with the Indian state’s inability to provide adequate social protection to its poorest citizens through targeted programmes. India’s vulnerable continue to be excluded from social safety nets. The multi-layered problems with social welfare schemes can be summarised in...

The cartoon controversy provides the possibility of interrogating the functioning of the academic system to understand its relationship with the downtrodden masses. A new deliberation is needed in order to make the academic world more sensitive and responsive towards the issues and concerns of the subaltern-oppressed communities. This will be an ethical incentive for the present-day dalit movement in India and can bring greater democratisation to the education system. Harish Wankhede...