-The Indian Express   After a season of excess and excitability, the prime minister’s assertion of constitutional propriety was welcome. In recent months, public discourse has been roiled by a series of corruption scandals, and to add to that, some of the solutions suggested by civil society champions of the Lokpal bill have been rash and potentially destabilising. The PM spoke up for the Constitution, and the importance of preserving the inbuilt...

-The Business Standard   By staying the state government’s hand on the return of the land acquired by the Tatas for their automobile project in Singur, the Supreme Court has injected some sense into the handling of the matter. The Mamata Banerjee government created an avoidable mess with its hasty decision to find a legislative way out of a difficult political situation. Even as the Calcutta High Court was hearing the...

ASHOK AGARWAL, a Senior Advocate practising in the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court, has been litigating for the right of education, primarily for those belonging to the weaker sections of society. In fact, even before the actual enactment of the Right to Education Bill, he had campaigned forcefully among policymakers to reinforce the link between out-of-school children and child labour. He was involved in several rounds of discussions...

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council has asked HRD ministry to examine bringing pre-school learning under the purview of Right to Education Act to "ensure continuity in the child's education". In real terms, bringing pre-school learning into RTE would mean decreasing the age limit from six years to four years. Government would have to amend the RTE Act and change the norms of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the flagship programme, that...

The Right to Education Act, which lacks a transformational vision, is geared to preparing foot soldiers for the global market. THE most encouraging and delightful news regarding school education in India since the pro-market reforms began in 1991 came from Erode district in Tamil Nadu recently. To be sure, it is neither about the World Bank-sponsored District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) of the 1990s nor about the internationally funded and...