-The Indian Express The fate of many private schools in the capital hangs in the balance. The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) had set a three-year deadline for schools, asking them to meet the infrastructural requirements specified under the Right To Education Act, expired on Sunday. The bone of contention is the area requirement under the RTE Act, which is 800 sqm for primary schools and 1,000 sqm for middle schools....

-Live Mint HRD minister Pallam Raju says focus should be on helping students access content, not on hardware The government seems to have virtually given up onAakash, the $35 tablet computer that was once billed as India's low-cost solution for bridging the divide between digital haves and have-nots. "Let's not get obsessed with hardware," human resource development (HRD) minister M.M. Pallam Raju said on Friday. "The overall (issue) is how we enable students....

-The Hindu In Nagaland, you will find women running commercial establishments, teaching in university, campaigning against alcohol abuse and toiling on terraced farms. You will even spot them sporting hard hats and shovelling gravel next to a road-roller repairing roads. The only place where you won’t find a woman is the State Assembly. Poignant reminder On International Women’s Day, it is a poignant reminder of how women are still struggling to gain a...

-The Hindu The ground beneath Arundhati Roy’s seismic claims on the Parliament House attack, is shaky — to say the least “Everyone is entitled to their own opinions”, the American politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan — among others — is credited with having said, “but not to his own facts.” Muhammad Afzal Guru’s execution on Saturday morning — a grim spectacle, where the Indian government disgraced itself by denying his family a last meeting,...

The total expenditure on central schemes for the poor and on the major subsidies exceeds the states' share of central taxes. These schemes are chronic bad performers due to a culture of immunity in public administration and weakened local governments. Arguing that the poor should be trusted to use these resources better than the state, a radical redirection with substantial direct transfers to individuals and complementary decentralisation to local governments...