-Outlook Admission attained, it's not easy progress for EWS children Every day, at 7:15 am, Prachi's mother walks the six-year-old to her school in Pune, walking cautiously past the corner of the road, to avoid the giant SUVs and sedans zipping past after dropping the wards at the fortress-like school complex. Prachi enters the school with a few other children from her neighbourhood, a colony of waste-pickers. Prachi's mother is one...

-MattersIndia.com Ludhiana (Punjab): teachers of government schools in Ludhiana district are opposing the newly introduced system of updating daily attendance and status of midday meal served to students through short message service (SMS) to the district administration. After Roopnagar district, the system was replicated in Ludhiana on the orders of Deputy Commissioner Rajat Aggarwal. But various teachers' unions have strongly opposed it and decided to take up the matter with Education Minister...

-The Indian Express India needs a national effort to speed up human development. That India was ranked 135 out of 187 countries on UNDP's human development index is perhaps the greatest concern for a nation with global ambition. In order to sustain our growth momentum and translate the gains of growth into wellbeing at a faster pace, India needs to rejig its strategy for accelerated human development. The performance in education and health...

-Outlook More government took Himachal near the top of development indices In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, the buzz around the so-called ‘Gujarat model' was such that without really knowing what it stood for, everyone wanted it. ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance' is as close as one could get in terms of concrete proposals. However, when one looks at the achievements of Gujarat, the buzz turns to a whimper (see...

-The Times of India Mitu Kumari, in charge of a government school in Patahin, a village on the outskirts of Muzaffarpur, Bihar, has a measured enthusiasm for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement that toilets for girls will be built in schools that still don't have this basic facility. For her 146 students and three women teachers, absence of toilets is an intolerable problem. "I have written to everybody, from the village mukhia...