-Countercurrents.org   The events of last over two decades have shown us, more than before that the efforts of dividing the nation by communal forces have been a major obstacle to social peace and process of development. In India while the communal violence began with the Jabalpur riot of 1961, it is from last couple of decades especially from 1980s that the divisive politics has tried to drive a wedge between different...

-The Indian Express Having faced criticism over objectionable content in school textBooks, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has ruled that all 14,000 institutions affiliated to it must stick to NCERT and CBSE textBooks. All schools will also have to set up websites declaring relevant information, including details pertaining to textBooks being used. Making these conditions for affiliation, the board recently amended its affiliation bylaws to ensure that only properly...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: Home to one-fourth of the world's visually-challenged persons, India will play a key role in negotiating a historic international treaty next month that will ensure that the community's access to globally-published material is not stymied by rigid copyright rules. The Extraordinary General Assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has called a diplomatic conference in June (17th-28 th) 2013 in Marrakesh, Morocco, to conclude the WIPO...

A recent statistical study by Indian researchers suggest that the MNREGA program in rural Andhra Pradesh might be having a positive effect on school enrolment and grades by improving the bargaining power of women within their household, as a consequence of earning wages in the rural job security program. The study is based on data from rural households in 5 districts in Andhra Pradesh and comprised of 3006 children, comparing...

-PTI Pingali has been appointed director of the Tata-Cornell Initiative in Agriculture and Nutrition Washington: Former World Bank economist Prabhu Pingali has been appointed by the Cornell University to lead effort to help reduce poverty and malnutrition in India, a project established through a USD 25 million endowment from the Tata Trusts. Pingali has been appointed director of the Tata-Cornell Initiative in Agriculture and Nutrition (TACO-AN), a long-term project established through a...