-The Indian Express   A majority of children of primary classes in rural areas are at least two grades below the required level of proficiency in both mathematics and language, according to a study released today. It said that while the ability of children to correctly formulate and write sentences on their own is “exceedingly” low, a high proportion of children in class IV were struggling with basic multiplications and divisions. The Annual Status...

Infant deaths resulting from a recent clinical trial in India have led to a media outcry. But few have considered how explosive these revelations actually are, or the problematic use and application of the Right to Information Act. When India’s Right to Information Act came into force in 2005, the legislation’s text acknowledged the conflict that could arise from revealing certain information, pointing out that there was a need to ‘harmonise’...

It could take you as long as two years to get a date for a simple MRI scan in the country's premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) while a CAT scan has a waiting period of more than four months. Patients requiring a total hip replacement or a total knee replacement, will wait for no less than 5 months. A waiting list - ranging from 2 months to...

-The Telegraph   Amartya Sen today blamed “bureaucratic controls” for the delay in release of funds for the upcoming Nalanda University in Bihar. He said the university would teach only two courses to start with because of funds shortage but hoped that in future, it would go beyond Teaching to do research as well. Sen felt that Indian universities’ track record in research was a crucial reason why not even one of them...

-The Times of India   The Rs 32 per capita urban poverty line is a measure only of extreme poverty, not of acceptable consumption-linked daily expenditure. Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia and rural development minister Jairam Ramesh have clarified this. They've also stated that prevailing BPL figures won't determine selection of the beneficiaries of social schemes. This hopefully will put an end to the high-decibel protests of opposition parties and...