Should the Central government run schools, crèches, pre-schools, dispensaries, employment schemes, the buying and selling of food grains, and build houses, not to speak of selling milk as it does in Delhi? Though the states seem to have taken it as their fate to have schemes on state subjects like education, agriculture and so on tailored for them by the Centre, as if in distrust of the states’ capability to think...

This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...

In the pre-budget Economic Survey 2010-11, the Union finance ministry made a strong pitch for the pro-growth impact of investment in human capital adding, “fortunately, there is awareness of this in India and efforts are afoot in terms of budgetary allocation and actual initiatives to boost the development of skill and human capital.” Given this leading comment, it was only natural that Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee laid special emphasis...

The government passed the historic Right to Education Act (RTE Act) making education a fundamental right of every child.The Act makes it obligatory for the government to ensure that every child in the six to 14 years age group gets free elementary education.According to government estimates, there are nearly 220 million children in the relevant age group, of which 4.6%, or nearly 9.2 million, are out of school.Under the Act,...

India's high burden of anaemia has now got the Prime Minister's Office seriously concerned. With the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) finding the prevalence of anaemia to be 80% in children, 70% in pregnant women and 24% in adult men, the PMO called a meeting on Thursday with top officials from the Planning Commission, ministries of health and women and child development, the National Institute of Nutrition and independent experts...