-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...

-Frontline   The United Nation's MDG report 2014 shows that despite India's significant economic progress, around one-third of the world's extremely poor people reside in the country. IT is raining development goals. As the period for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) draws to a close next year, discussions around these goals and what should replace them have reached fever pitch, with national governments, international organisations and representatives of civil society participating in them. Of...

-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 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...

-The Hindu   The central policy challenge for the new government is how to sustain social gains while ensuring that Dalits can participate more meaningfully in the economy, by sharing in the fruits of economic growth while contributing as well In his address to the nation on Independence Day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his intention to "take a solemn pledge of working for... the welfare of the poor, oppressed, Dalits, the exploited...