While India’s new Right to Education Act seeks to bring free and compulsory education for all children, it seems to short-change them through an unrealistic vision of the private sector’s involvement. In August 2009, the Right to Education Act was passed in the Indian Parliament with no debate, by the fewer than 60 members who happened to be attending the session that day. Not that the Act was an open-and-shut...

The Supreme Court on Monday issued notice to the Centre and eight States for a direction to explain the steps taken to prevent honour killings at the national level and in the respective States. A vacation Bench comprising Justice R.M. Lodha and Justice A.K. Patnaik, after hearing counsel Ravi Kant, issued notice to Haryana, Punjab, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh asking them to respond to the...

In India, of the total cultivated area of around 140.30 million hectares only 60.86 million is irrigated and remaining 79.44 million hectares is rain-fed. Rain-fed crops account for 48 percent area under food crops and 68 percent of the area under non-food crops. Irrigated land accounts for nearly 55 percent of food production while rain-fed contributes just about 45 percent. Rain-fed farming is risk prone and is characterized by low...

The Planning Commission’s advice to the Haryana government to levy a cess on agricultural power to raise funds for replenishing dwindling groundwater is wise counsel that is likely to fall on deaf ears. There is no denying that the continuous decline in groundwater levels across the subcontinent and weak attempts at replenishment constitute a grave threat to human security in this part of the world. Haryana is not a lonely...

Umesh Kumar and his wife Satvati Devi were woken in the middle of the night by loud cries coming from the neighbouring house. "She was crying loudly. She was pleading, 'Kill me, but please don't hurt him.' She loved him and they wanted to get married," Ms Devi tells me. Two days after teenage lovers Asha and Yogesh were brutally killed, Swaroop Nagar colony on the north-western outskirts of the...