-The Indian Express Eight years after the Sachar committee report on the condition of Muslims and creation of a Ministry of Minority Affairs, a post-Sachar evaluation committee, headed by former JNU professor Amitabh Kundu, has concluded that though a start has been made in addressing development deficits of the community, government interventions have not quite matched in scale the large numbers of the marginalised. Poverty levels among Muslims, the committee found, remained...

-Press Information Bureau/ Ministry of Tribal Affairs Centre has launched Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana (VKY) for welfare of Tribals. Launching the scheme on the occasion of the meeting of the Tribal Welfare Ministers of States/UTs here today the Union Tribal Welfare Minister Shri Jual Oram said that the scheme been launched on pilot basis in one block each of the States of AP, MP, HP, Telangana, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and...

-IPS News MALKANGIRI (Odisha)- Scattered across 31 remote hilltop villages on a mountain range that towers 1,500 to 4,000 feet above sea level, in the Malkangiri district of India's eastern Odisha state, the Upper Bonda people are considered one of this country's most ancient tribes, having barely altered their lifestyle in over a thousand years. Resistant to contact with the outside world and fiercely skeptical of modern development, this community of under...

-India Today At a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi is spearheading a drive to build separate toilets for boys and girls in schools across the country within a year, the issue has been hit by a tussle between the Drinking Water and Sanitation Ministry and the Human Resource Development Ministry over who will fund the construction in state-run schools. Modi's dream project "Swachh Bharat", which aims to make India free of...

-The Hindustan Times The recently released Annual Status of Education Report (Aser) 2013, which covers every rural district in India, contains some good but mostly bad news. Enrolment in India's primary schools is still at an impressive 96%, and the number of schools compliant with the Right to Education (RTE) Act norms, such as providing drinking water and usable toilets, continues to rise. But much of this is undermined by a...