What are the poor most concerned about? After meeting families in 175 Indian villages in the last decade, Anirudh Krishna, says the poor's greatest worry is their children's future. With a manner of a school teacher, Professor Krishna, who teaches at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in the US, has led a team meeting poor families to find out why poverty persists. The research also includes...

EVEN though the Right to Information Act guarantees citizens their right to know and expose corruption in government offices, increasing attacks on RTI activists have put this most important right in jeopardy. The RTI Act was enacted after a long struggle by civil rights organisations. However, those who dare question the ways of the powers that be and expose them are eliminated in cold-blooded murders. The manner in which Amit...

Independent India's greatest failing must be its inability to feed its people. With 42 per cent of all children malnourished, 56 per cent of women anaemic, and the country ranked 65th out of 84 countries on the Global Hunger Index, the report card of the state on nutrition must have an F. Most disturbing is the fact that things have got worse over time. In the first half of the...

With the key States — Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan — yet to respond to the Centre's letter asking for their comments and suggestions on the draft Bill on honour killings, the Group of Ministers, which met on Thursday, was unable to progress beyond a decision to send the States a reminder. Emerging from the less than hour-long meeting here, Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram told journalists that he hoped...

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is world’s most extensive primary education programme, but is it working? The grim reality that India’s Right to Education is at best working in terms of quantity of schools, and certainly not in terms of quality of education, was first proved in successive Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER), brought out by education NGO ‘Pratham’ through nationwide ground-level surveys. Now a Planning Commission evaluation report confirms most...