Third report in three months to highlight lack of quality education in India; poses risk to knowledge hub hopes Nearly two years after the Right to Education (RTE) Act was introduced with the promise of providing free and compulsory education to all primary school children, the learning outcome in the country has actually deteriorated in terms of quality. In yet another wake-up call for policymakers, the 2011 Annual Status of Education Report...

-The Telegraph   The quality of elementary education is falling in rural schools almost two years after education was made a fundamental right in April 2010. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2011, a survey of government and private schools in rural areas conducted by the NGO Pratham, shows a decline in schoolchildren’s “learning outcome levels” compared with the previous year, whether in reading or arithmetic skills.  However, students of private schools have...

Calling for urgent measures to provide sanitation facility across the country, Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has pointed to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that in addition to malnutrition another distressing national shame which India can't live with is open defecation. Mr. Ramesh, who also controls the Department of Drinking Water Supply which implements sanitation programme, has written a letter to the Prime Minister urging him to change the government's...

-The Hindu   Suggest “necessary preventive” measures to safeguard the interest of workers   Trade union groups on Monday pitched for a worker-oriented Budget for 2012-13 aimed at removing poverty and unemployment and suggested “necessary preventive” measures to safeguard the interests of workers. At their meeting here with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee — the second in the series of the customary pre-Budget consultations — representatives of trade unions (TUs) proposed that wages of contract labour...

Over 55,000 women die due to child birth in India every year. Of the total children born in one year, a mind boggling 13 lakh die before they reach their first birthdays, most of them within a few weeks of entering this world. Another indicator that the world watches is how many children cannot survive beyond five years of age. In India every year, over 16 lakh under-5 years children...