India is setting up a $150-million corpus using funds from the World Bank, European Union and the UK government’s Department for International Development to hatch innovative strategies to universalise secondary education. Called the National Innovation Fund, the corpus will provide financial support to out-of-the-box projects for which budgetary funds cannot be used because of the risk of failure, top government officials have told The Telegraph. “Think of the fund like a...

Population growth seems to have dropped off the public agenda these days. One reason for this is a twist in the old Malthusian argument that sees the rising proportion of persons of working age as a positive for growth. This shift in the age-distribution, it is argued, will stimulate savings as pressure on household and public budgets for the needs of dependent children comes down. Young workers are assumed to...

Haryana is infamous for its skewed sex ratio. But thanks to quotas for women in grassroots bodies, over 16,000 women are set to be elected in the panchayat elections next month, getting a chance to show their might. "The panchayat elections in the state are being held June 6 and 12. The reservation of seats for women candidates will give them a fair representation in these bodies," said state election commissioner...

The government needs to recruit 20 lakh teachers to successfully implement the Right to Education Act, Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said on Monday. The implementation of the Act was a difficult task and the only solution would be to hire teachers even if they did not have the required qualification. “In the course of five years these teachers need to acquire the qualification necessary for the position,” he...

Caste proponents say the census must include questions on caste to establish true caste ratios. Opponents say questions on caste are socially divisive. They also raise a behavioural objection: the very announcement of a caste census could encourage people to claim, fraudulently, that they belong to a caste entitled to reservations. This behavioural objection applies as forcefully to surveys for determining poverty. The National Sample Survey Organization conducts periodic surveys on...