While human rights activists across the world express their shock and outrage at Binayak Sen's life imprisonment sentence, one of the biggest blows will be felt by his alma mater, Christian Medical College (CMC) Vellore. Until the verdict, the gentle doctor was busy, among other things, with a new project which could usher in a new light for healthcare education in India. Following the Social Determinants of Health report of...

No matter how tired we are in the course of a difficult day’s work, there is always the reassuring feeling that at the end of the hard work we’ll go back to sleep in the comfort of our home. But there are millions of people in our cities who simply do not have a home. The homeless of our cities suffer the most; yet they are the most neglected. No...

Navodaya Vidyalayas will be exempted from the provisions of the Right to Education Act. The two key provisions — no-screening and giving 25% reservation to children from economically weaker section — will not be applicable to 444 Navodaya Vidyalayas across the country. These schools will be treated as specified category schools. The HRD ministry had sought the opinion of former Chief Justice of India A S Anand, who said Navodaya Vidyalayas...

South Asia in general and India in particular have the dubious distinction of standing out for wrong reasons every time a new global poverty report is released. We not only have the largest number of underweight children, a very high maternal mortality rate and the world’s highest number of out of school children but we also top the global malnutrition chart. (See links below for more details)  However the 2011 United...

Despite the fact that over 350 million rural people have escaped poverty over the past ten years, the bulk of the world’s poor are still found in rural areas, says a new United Nations report, which calls for greater investment in agriculture and efforts to boost livelihoods. The Rural Poverty Report 2011, released today by the UN International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), found an overall decline of extreme poverty –...