-The Indian Express Contraceptive use saves the lives of more than a quarter of million women each year, either from death in childbirth or unsafe abortions, according to estimates published. In 2008, 355,000 women died while giving birth or from illegal or dangerous abortions, a study published by The Lancet said. But more than 250,000 deaths were averted that year because contraception reduced unwanted pregnancies, it said. “If all women in developing countries who...

-IANS Over two years after the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) was notified by the central government , more than 95% of Schools in the country do not comply with its guidelines, a study by an NGO has found. Data compiled by RTE Forum with inputs from its members from across the country points out that only one out of 10 Schools in 2010-11 had drinking...

-The Times of India   Higher education in India should not perpetuate inequality of opportunity It's admission time again. Charming images of 'freshers' entering the campus and glossy advertisements of the universities we had never heard before hide the harsh reality of educational mortality from School to higher education. Elaborate coverage of rising cutoffs and entrance tests draw our attention to individual merit and luck. We tend to forget the overwhelming role of...

Model community forestry initiatives in Orissa are defying Forest Department efforts to control and exploit the region’s forests. ‘Heaven is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees / And hell is a forest of miles and miles of Mohua trees with a forest guard in it!’ Thus goes a song of the Muria Adivasis in the forests of Bastar in central India. Encapsulated in this simple expression, however, is...

-The Hindu One must agree with certain aspects of Prof. Krishna Kumar’s centrepiece in The Hindu on June 30, 2012 (“A messy corner of India’s modernity”), on the dilemma of the Schoolteacher in denying admission to child brides but at the same time examine some of his propositions from the perspective of girls who are exercising agency to continue in the education system. As he has stated, Schools are not to be...