-The Indian Express April 1 marked the third anniversary of the passage of the Right of Children for Free and Compulsory Education (RTE). There is little argument that the implementation of the RTE in these three years has been less than satisfactory. Deadlines for the enforcement of input norms - infrastructure, pupil-teacher ratios - have come and gone and potentially game-changing provisions, like 25 per cent reservation for economically weaker sections...

-The Hindu Around 200 survivors of the Bhopal gas disaster held demonstrations in front of the Dow Chemical's office in Vikroli in suburban Mumbai on Tuesday, demanding that the company take up the criminal, civilian and environmental liability of Union Carbide, which they now own. The demonstrators said they were protesting against Dow Chemical's continuing business in hazardous chemicals when the survivors were dying in Bhopal and the next generation was facing...

-The Indian Express Bulandshahr: Life, for them, had never been easy. The couple and their family of 16 live in a two-room tenement and the father, who works at a local grocery store for a daily wage of Rs 200, is the only earning member. Theirs is also one of four Jatav Dalit families in a majority Lodhe Rajput village just outside Bulandshahr city, and have been under pressure for long. But...

-The Telegraph Siliguri, April 7: If the panchayat system is dissolved and not replaced by newly elected bodies on time, at least three central schemes would come to a halt in the state, Jairam Ramesh said today. According to the Union rural development minister the national job scheme for villagers, which entails 100-days work for at least one member of a BPL family, would be hit the most. The other two schemes...

-Live Mint Farmers resisting India's biggest FDI deal are paying a heavy price for their stand In June 2005, the Orissa government signed the country's biggest foreign direct investment deal yet with the South Korean steel manufacturer Posco for a $12 billion (around `65,856 crore) plant near Paradip in the mineral-rich state. Livelihoods in eight existing agricultural and fishing villages were to give way for the project that was intended to be...