Activists realise it takes a fight to translate democracy from thin paper to thick action In the winter of 1997, advocate Ashok Agarwal filed a petition in the Supreme Court opposing the nearly 400 per cent hike in school fees. This was the year the Fifth Pay Commission recommendations were implemented and the salaries of teachers shot up. Parents trying to cope with the overall price rise were suddenly hit by...
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Employment guarantee scheme under scanner after hunger death
A landless labourer dies on Christmas day after going without food for five days. Neither he nor his wife, who was a job card holder under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, knew they could demand work or avail of unemployment benefits as a right It was a death that could have been avoided. Kishen Singh, a 45-year-old landless labourer, died of hunger in Champakheda village in south Rajasthan. What...
More »RTE still remains on paper by Anita Joshua
The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE) remains on paper today; four months after it secured presidential assent. This, after the Human Resource Development Ministry flagged its passage by Parliament as one of its achievements in the first 100 days of the second edition of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Allocation And, from all indications, the RTE — the law to operationalise the Fundamental Right...
More »Voluntary service by Bhaskar Ghose
Very little is known generally about operational NGOs that work closely with people on a daily basis. WHILE a good many people in the country know that the Central and State governments have a number of plans and projects to bring about development – not all of them either well-conceived or well administered – they are much less aware of the part played in the overall development process by non-governmental...
More »'Equal quality education for all kids'
Demanding equal educational opportunities for all children, a large contingent of people walked to Bal Bhavan here this past Friday in support of three key demands on the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. December 11 was the day India ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to demand the right to education for every Indian child. Regretting that millions of...
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