-Economic and Political Weekly There are basic methodological and conceptual problems with recent research that ends up arguing that private school education is more effective than public education. Such findings have obvious policy implications but it is critical that research that informs policy is based on a correct reading of facts, keeping the larger vision of education in mind. Recent research into the cost effectiveness of public education vis-à-vis private education concludes...

-Hindustan Times The picture of rural Indian life today that emerges from what is probably the world's largest study ever of household deprivation is sobering and sombre. It describes a massive hinterland still imprisoned in persisting endemic impoverishment, want, illiteracy and indeed hopelessness. It tells a story that every thinking and caring Indian must heed. Advocates of free markets, opposed to building a welfare state, have long argued that accelerated market-led economic...

-The Times of India As crops fail, banks don't deliver and the government falters, Mandya's farmers find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous moneylenders Chenne Gowda has a Rs. 4 lakh albatross around his neck. The 55-year-old sugarcane farmer from Chikka maralli village in Pan davapura taluk, Mandya district, took the loan from private moneylenders but has no idea how he'll repay. His crop, on two acres, is wilting in the field...

-Frontline Odisha shows the way in the implementation of the ICDS scheme to ensure that children receive nutrition and care in their earliest years, but the Centre’s moves to slash budgetary allocations could wreak havoc on such programmes. At the Tasarda anganwadi centre in Odisha’s Mayurbhanj district, as the auxiliary nurse and midwife (ANM) pulled out the blood pressure (BP) instrument to check a pregnant woman, the children at the anganwadi began...

-The Indian Express The SECC has identified 14 parameters of exclusion. Fulfilling even one of them would result in a household being treated as non-deprived. Adivasis or Scheduled Tribes are the most deprived among rural households in India, despite their suffering much lower levels of landlessness and dependence on manual casual labour compared to the Dalits or Scheduled Castes. According to the results of the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011, nearly...