-The Times of India Bengaluru: Midday meals and nutritious milk seem to have done the trick. Not many students are leaving government schools in Karnataka these days due to effective retention strategies, say experts. The number of out-of-school children has come down to 90,000 in 2016 from 7,00,000 in 2001, according to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) officials. The number of dropouts in 2015-16 was 12,878. Paradoxically, enrolment in government schools, which are in...

-The Telegraph The recent budget talked about the government's plan to double farm incomes in the next five years. This will be done through investments in rural infrastructure, especially irrigation. About 50 per cent of land under foodgrain production in India is irrigated. This means that half of the foodgrain producing land in India faces weather uncertainties and, hence, those working on them face annual (seasonal) variations in income. These variations...

-The Times of India New Delhi: The government is working on a proposal to amend the code of criminal procedure (CrPC), restricting the powers of police to Arrest when a person is available for interrogation by issuing notices, barring in cases of heinous crimes. A separate 'bail act' is also under consideration that would limit the discretionary powers of courts in granting relief to an accused. The law ministry is keen to...

-The Hindu Business Line The Economic Survey’s efforts to link ‘excess’ labour regulation to this practice do not stand up to scrutiny The Economic Survey has unconvincingly linked the practise of contract labour to an excess of labour regulation — what it calls ‘regulatory cholesterol’. The Survey alleges that to negotiate the regulatory “cholesterol” in labour law firms resort to contract labour. This is a contestable view. According to the Survey, extensive use...

-The Hindu The Aadhaar Bill opens the door to mass surveillance. This danger needs to be seen in the light of recent attacks on the right to dissent. No other country, and certainly no democratic country, has ever held its own citizens hostage to such a powerful infrastructure of surveillance. The Aadhaar project was sold to the public based on the claim that enrolment was “voluntary”. This basically meant that there was...