-Live Mint Building an outcomes-focused delivery system is a particular challenge in India For once, I am optimistic about elementary education in India. Not because we have witnessed improvements in learning levels. In fact, the opposite is true. The latest Annual Status of Education Report highlights the deepening crisis of poor learning levels. In 2008, just under 50% of standard III students could read a standard I text. In 2012, this dropped...

-The Hindu Rajouri /Janjgir Champa: Exactly a year ago last February, 78 migrants working in bonded debt in brick kilns in Jammu and Kashmir made a desperate bid to start a new life. Sahodara Bai, who had worked at the kiln with her husband and eight children for 25 years, returned from a rare visit to her village in the plains in Chhattisgarh with a pamphlet. “The parchaa (pamphlet) had the name...

-Frontline Social development indicators in Gujarat are poor, proving that development in the State is lopsided On a hot day last November near Rajkot, Ramjibhai Patel, an octogenarian farmer, pointed to the middle distance and said, “See that lake?” There was indeed a shimmer in the dry landscape indicating water, but after a relatively poor monsoon, it seemed improbable. Chuckling, he said, “Yes, I see doubt on your face and you are...

-The Times of India HARRAI: The Khairwar tribe in this remote village of Madhya Pradesh is on the verge of extinction because of the tribe members' inability to conceive. In the past five decades, villagers say, there has been only one birth in the tribe. And that child too -- born in 2011 -- died within a year. Why are the members of this community not able to have children? Locals attribute...

-Live Mint In Parliament address, Mukherjee says direct cash transfers will cut leakages and bring benefits to the poorest Acknowledging that growing aspirations, particularly among the youth, are going largely unmet, the government has signalled a policy makeover, including undertaking “difficult decisions”. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) also indicated that it was looking to the direct benefit transfer scheme based on the Aadhaar or unique identity system to restore the feel-good factor...