-The Economic Times For many, it is a sense of deja vu. Fifteen years ago, the government and India's financial regulators came under fire after hundreds of crores were cleaned up by a few individuals and entities from gullible investors, who were promised fabulous returns from plantation schemes. In the uproar that followed, the government and the regulators sought to palm off the responsibility of regulation of such schemes on each...

KEY TRENDS   • According to National Sample Survey report no. 583: Persons with Disabilities in India, the percentage of persons with disability who received aid/help from Government was 21.8 percent, 1.8 percent received aid/help from organisation other than Government and another 76.4 percent did not receive aid/ help *8   • As per National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS-4), the Under-five Mortality Rate (U5MR) was 57.2 per 1,000 live births (for the non-STs it was 38.5)...

-Down to Earth   State blames poor financial condition for the move The Bihar government has defended its recent move to lower its minimum wage rate offered to unskilled labourers, saying the state is in poor financial condition. Bihar has lowered its wage rate offered under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) from Rs 144 to Rs 135, while the state minimum wage is Rs 168. This is despite the...

-The Hindu In its latest form, the National Food Security Bill, 2013 promises to address the extreme irony of an ambitious nation holding mountains of food in storage, while masses of its people are undernourished or even starving. The right to food is finally on the threshold of being legislated. Every step taken to widen the coverage of food security schemes is an advance. Yet, the empirical truth is that...

-The Hindu   Success stories from the right to education law give no joy when assessments show that children are ill-versed in the 3Rs and classrooms remain discriminatory Three years ago today, India, for the first time in history, made a promise to its children. With the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education coming into effect on April 1, 2010, every child was guaranteed the fundamental right to eight years of...