-The Times of India NEW DELHI: There are more violations of the law with with regard to EWS/DG (economically weaker section/disadvantaged group) admissions in private schools. A new study by Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights (DCPCR) and Save the Children has found that 52% of MCD-unaided and 55% of DoE-unaided schools are "following screening procedure in the admission of EWS/DG". Screening of candidates --- essentially selecting candidates on the basis...

-The Hindu   Far from being ‘useless’, the MNREGA helps the impoverished and resilient poor earn a decent living. Famously on the floor of Parliament, Prime Minister Modi dismissed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) as a ‘living monument’ of the previous governments’ failures, condemning millions of impoverished people to survive by ‘digging ditches’. This spring near Bhim in Rajasthan, I had the rare experience of labouring on an MGNREGA site....

-The Hindu Business Line New variant to generate electricity from cooking Greenway, a Mumbai-based start-up which produces eco-friendly and fuel-efficient biomass stoves, will build prototype units by July that can also generate 10 watt electricity from the cooking heat. Intended to be an alternative to harmful and inefficient traditional mud stoves, Greenway’s ‘smart stove’ claims 50 per cent fuel savings and 70 per cent reduction in smoke emission. It has been tested and...

-IPS News TIKAMGARH: Eighty-year-old Chenabai Kushwaha sits on a charpoy under a neem tree in the village of Chitawar, located in the Tikamgarh district in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, staring intently at a dictaphone. “Please sing a song for us,” urges the woman holding the voice recorder. Kushwaha obliges with a melancholy tune about an eight-year-old girl begging her father not to give her away in marriage. The melody melts...

-The Hindu ‘They juggle multiple tasks and are often unable to vent their frustration’ Fifteen people commit suicide every hour in India, shows the most recent data by the National Crime Records Bureau. Of these, around 17 per cent are housewives. In contrast, suicide by farmers makes up only 3 per cent of all suicides. The NCRB divides the total suicides into 10 professional categories — housewife, service (government), service (private), public sector...