Manual scavenging persists, but community and political mobilisation of workers has initiated change. Only those who are in denial are surprised by the continued existence in India of casteism and inhuman practices associated with stigmatisation, despite institutions of the state decreeing their abolition. But progress has been made in fits and starts, and agency – in the form of community and political mobilisation – has played a role in their slow...

HRD Ministry asks them to adopt random selection process Guidelines for admission in schools, issued under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, prohibit screening of children and interviewing their parents. The guidelines issued by the Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry have also asked the schools to adopt a random selection process. “The schools have to adopt an admission procedure which is non-discriminatory, rational and transparent...

After months of debating the issue and seeking the law ministry's opinion, the HRD ministry on Tuesday finally issued guidelines about screening of children at the time of admission under the Right to Education Act. HRD minister Kapil Sibal said, "We have taken the law ministry's clearance to issue the guidelines on screening. The RTE Act will be amended later. Had we gone in for an amendment on screening now admissions...

The latest Human Development Report, or HDR, (2010), marking its 20th anniversary, is both remarkable and useful. Remarkable because it brims with intellectual confidence, born out of a sense of vindication over the “conceptual brilliance and continued relevance” of Mahbub ul-Huq’s original human development paradigm set out in the first sentence of the 1990 report — “People are the real wealth of nations.” The idea of human development, which, through...

All school children across the country will soon have unique identification numbers (UID) which will help in tracking their movement in Educational Institutions and academic records. This follows the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Union Human Resource Development Ministry and the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) here on Wednesday. The system will help in tracking students' mobility by creating an electronic registry, right from the primary level through...