-The Times of India Bengaluru: Midday meals and nutritious milk seem to have done the trick. Not many students are leaving government schools in Karnataka these days due to effective retention strategies, say experts. The number of out-of-school children has come down to 90,000 in 2016 from 7,00,000 in 2001, according to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) officials. The number of dropouts in 2015-16 was 12,878. Paradoxically, enrolment in government schools, which are in...

-TheHansIndia.com Social activist Medha Patkar comes down heavily on AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu for ‘grabbing fertile lands’ from farmers for high-rise buildings She also criticises Telangana State government for its ‘anti-farmer policies’ Hyderabad: The third Kisan Swaraj Sammelan has called upon farmers to put up a unified fight in support of their demand for providing them with a comprehensive Farmers' Income Guarantee Act. They were of the unanimous opinion that such...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: A day before the India-EU summit on March 30, international human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch wrote to the European Union brass complaining how the Modi regime was using the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act to restrict foreign funding oto Indian NGOs like Greenpeace India and ones run by activist Teesta Setalvad, besides stifling free speech by those critical of the government. Intelligence agencies have taken note...

-The Indian Express Yes, except that farmers suffer rules other businessmen never encounter Agriculture is said to be India’s largest private-sector enterprise, engaging nearly 119 million farmers (“cultivators”) and another 144 million landless labourers, as per the 2011 Census. It is even considered the most respectable business, going by the oft-quoted slogan “uttam kheti, madhyam vyapar, kanishtha naukri (supreme is farming, mediocre is trade and most lowly is service)”. But the exalted...

-The Indian Express India does need these toilets badly. Over half a billion people practice open defecation, the highest number in the world. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) has a target of 12 crore toilets by October 2019. That makes for 2,739 toilets a day, almost two toilets every second! Work on the toilets is on track. In fact, reports show that the targets are being surpassed. In 2014-15, the very first...