HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...

Over the past week, I’ve chronicled my investigative research on starvation in India – a project I’ve been working on with a colleague from the Centre for Equity Studies, a New Delhi think tank. We’ve told stories of people who were forced to eat poisoned roots to stay alive; a family that suffered the deaths of members from three different generations in a span of 24 hours; a woman faced with...

-CNN-IBN   Schools in Delhi are set to file a review petition against the Supreme Court ruling on 25 per cent reservation for children belonging to the economically weaker sections of the society. Delhi Schools said that they were waiting for a copy of the order before going ahead.   The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Constitutional validity of the Right to Education Act, saying that there will be 25 per cent reservation...

All private Schools and government-aided minority institutions in the country will have to provide 25% reservation in entry-level admissions for children from the weaker sections of society, the Supreme Court said on Thursday. The court said its order would take effect immediately but with most Schools having completed admissions for the current academic year, poor students will be able to benefit from the judgment from 2013. Children admitted under this...

The Supreme Court on Thursday by a majority of 2:1 upheld the constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which provides for free and compulsory education to children between the age of 6 and 14 years and mandates government/aided/and non-minority unaided Schools to reserve 25 per cent of the seats for these children. A Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar...