-Live Mint Latest houselisting data demonstrates a visible growth in the material well-being of the two groups Indians, all of them, across class and caste, traded up over the past decade, a period of rapid and record economic growth—that’s the counter-intuitive message in the latest update to Census 2011. According to the so-called houselisting data released by the census, scheduled castes (SCs) and scheduled tribes (STs) have, like the rest of the country,...

-The Indian Express   RTE amendment is laudable, but HRD ministry should look after special education Last month, I attended several meetings on Right to Education (RTE) and, in particular, the education of children with special needs — and I found the usual lack of understanding about their needs. What is special education? What is inclusive education? And what is the difference between the two? These are issues that only a few countries...

-The Hindu “The aim of education is social development, and not profit-making. ‘Education shops' must either not be allowed to function or must not have profit as their motive,” said Anil Sadgopal, presidium member, All India Forum for Right to Education (AIF-RTE). Announcing that the State Platform for Common School System (SPCSS) along with the AIF-RTE will be organising a two-day all-India conference for ‘Abolishing commercialisation of education and building a...

A narrow education is making engineers oblivious to the importance of human interaction and raising the cost of even simple tasks My time in South Asia has rewarded me with an enigma: why is engineering so expensive here? Why is it often many times more expensive than in Australia, my home? My search for answers led me to shanty towns on the fringes of mega-cities. We compared an award winning Indian factory...

-The Hindu   Encouraging signs of girls trying to break shackles of outdated customs in Rajasthan Depicting encouraging signals of girls trying to break the shackles of outdated customs, two instances of young women repudiating their childhood marriages in defiance of diktats of the caste elders have come up in Rajasthan. In both the cases, the community members have allegedly threatened the girls' families. Twenty-year-old Rekha Kumari, a resident of Peepar in Jodhpur district,...