-The Business Standard   No state has met the basic RTE norms of trained teachers, infrastructure needs or pupil-teacher ratio On April 1, the Right to Free and Compulsory Education of Children (RTE) will turn four. The landmark law enacted by the United Progressive Alliance in 2009 was yet another entitlement to deliver free compulsory education to all children between the ages of 6 and 14. Till date, no state has met the...

-IANS   About 36 percent of the children in Delhi are malnourished with a nutritional scheme targetted at the 0-6 age-group reaching only 30 percent of the intended beneficiaries, a report released Wednesday said. At 38 percent, the malnutritional rate is higher among girls than boys (34 percent). This means that four out of every 10 children in Delhi are malnourished. And, while the coverage of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme is already...

-The Business Standard   Study also says MGNREGA workers spent almost 21 minute less in collecting each payment made electronically compared with manual transfer Even as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has put on hold its ambitious unique identification (UID) code-linked cash transfer programme, a study by noted economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar shows that leakage of funds allocated for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)...

-Down to Earth   Study by non-profit in two blocks in Bihar's Patna district says delay in decision-making and reaching healthcare centres caused maximum maternal deaths A study of maternal deaths in two blocks of Patna district in Bihar says access to free ambulance service would help to reduce such deaths. A majority of dalit and muslim women die during transit because of absence of free ambulance service, says the study by the...

-The Business Standard Since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government decided to put on hold the Aadhaar-based subsidy transfer for domestic liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), questions have been raised about the future of one of Congress' most ambitious initiatives aimed at plugging leakages. Two months after the government move, a pioneering study by economists Karthik Muralidharan, Paul Niehaus and Sandip Sukhtankar showed leakages dropped 12 per cent when smart cards were...