It came as a rude shock for parents of economically weaker sections (EWS) whose wards were denied admission under the Right to Education Act, which guarantees 25% reservation in schools at entry level. Most schools don't seem inclined to implement the provisions of the RTE Act as the state government has failed to frame rules in this regard. A few schools are not even accepting the forms under this category,...

Over the past decade, as crops have failed year after year, 200,000 farmers have killed themselves Naryamaswamy Naik went to the cupboard and took out a tin of pesticide. Then he stood before his wife and children and drank it. "I don't know how much he had borrowed. I asked him, but he wouldn't say," Sugali Nagamma said, her tiny grandson playing at her feet. "I'd tell him: don't worry, we...

Mai-baap. That is how poor Indians referred to the state ever since independence. The benign provider looking after its subjects like the rajas of yore. But, today, the people have started demanding accountability from the mai-baap. Why? Because a clutch of new laws, like the Right To Information Act (RTI) and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), are moving the government's developmental promises beyond "the realm of a privilege that...

The CPI(M) today said the government has "no mandate" to negotiate the Indo-European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA) without consulting Parliament and political parties as it would adversely affect the economy and large sections of the people. Maintaining that negotiations on FTA "till date have been conducted under a veil of secrecy", it claimed that the Government has in the past signed agreements that "affect large sections of the people adversely...

‘Government does not have mandate to conduct parleys without discussion'Several areas of concerns in texts being negotiated for the India-EU FTAThe Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Saturday expressed concern over the “veil of secrecy” around negotiations for the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA), and re-emphasised that the Manmohan Singh government did not have the mandate to conduct parleys on it without discussion within the country.Referring to the EU...