Empower school principals to truly deliver education to India The Right to Education (RTE) law, and the subsequent Supreme Court judgment, has focused attention on the future of school education in India. The judgment on the provision that requires private schools to offer 25 per cent of their seats to economically weaker sections opens new opportunities for the poor, and that is welcome. But in our fiercely hierarchical society, class-conscious...

The colonial government took a liberal view of the merciless lampooning that it received at the hands of cartoonists in the Indian press A cartoon is a written expression of the comic impulse, and the cartoonist is an artisan of nib and brush who puts down complex processes of reason and argument in drawings and pictures. His impact is that readers sit up, smile, frown, or simply laugh. In short, cartoons...

SANGLI/ SATARA: Open trailers packed with families and cattle have become a common sight along Maharashtra's highways - a telling sign of the distress the drought in 15 districts of the state has brought with it. Truckloads of villagers are migrating from the hinterland to cities like Mumbai, Pune and Kolhapur in desperate search for livelihood. While many officials deny the drought-driven migration, the absence of male heads in rural homes...

-The Business Standard Still waiting for a crackdown on antibiotic over-prescription According to a recent study in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, the drug-resistant bacterial strain known as New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase 1, or NDM-1, has spread to 40 countries. This is quite remarkable, given that it was only discovered in 2008 in the UK, among patients who had recently been hospitalised in India. The “superbug”, as it is commonly known, is...

A scholarly study of corruption in the larger context of societal growth and development Corruption is no longer a word and has become a noise. Debates on corruption have reached high decibel levels and the world is no closer to solutions. Given the complexity, there are as many views as there are participants. Some speak from high moral pedestals like those from the rich, donor countries. It is no surprise that...