-PTI A Bill which seeks to decriminalise suicide and provide better healthcare for people with mental illness was passed by the Rajya Sabha on Monday. The Mental Health Care Bill, 2013, says that any person who attempts suicide shall be presumed, unless proved otherwise, to have mental illness and shall not be liable to punishment under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code. Now, a person who attempts suicide is charged under the...

-The Hindu A levy on firms, resources from which are earmarked for vocational training, is what could help the country bridge the skill gap in its workforce. Financing technical vocational education and training (VET) is costlier than general education due to its technical nature. Pre-service training requires the installation of equipment and trained instructors to train youth. This raises the cost of training, and remains a factor preventing pre-service training from expanding...

-TheWire.in The number of people needing technical and vocational education is at least 20 million per year, but the system is barely churning out 5 million per year. In India until the middle of the 2000’s, employers were hardly interested in training within their own enterprises, let alone the system outside their enterprises. However, rapid GDP growth during those years led to a serious shortage of skilled staff. The government of India...

-The Hindu Business Line BusinessLine goes to villages, including those visited in 2014, to understand the progress of the ambitious National Optical Fibre Network. Unused infrastructure and low awareness tell a story of missed links In one corner of the Ramnagar village panchayat office, in Panisagar block of Tripura, is a defunct four-year-old computer. The machine, connected with a 10 mbps broadband line was supposed to bring digital services to this remote...

-The Hindu Business Line If the finance panel’s award has been negated by cutbacks elsewhere, there’s a problem A few days back, the States conveyed to the Centre that the new devolution arrangement — more under the Fourteenth Finance Commission award and less from the Union Budget — was not working well for them. The main burden of their argument was that the additional transfers — ₹1.78 lakh crore more this year...