BANWARA, India – In the fall of 2006, Gita Devi was pregnant with her sixth child when her family fell on hard times. A severe drought made it more difficult than ever to find farm work here in India’s northeastern plains. The family couldn’t afford food. It was unable to get a government ration card to buy grains and rice at steep discounts, even though it clearly was poor enough to...

HETA, India – At the entrance to this village in India’s eastern state of Jharkhand, a large pond glistened under the bright autumn sun. Yellow and blue lilies surrounded it. A tailor was stitching clothes outside his shop while a few boys nearby were playing carrom on the lid of a rusted oil barrel. It was a tranquil, rustic setting – a candidate for a landscape painting, it seemed. But it...

With the Supreme Court throwing its full weight behind the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, (better known as the Right to Education Act or RTE Act) on Thursday, the composition of students in schools as well as the economics of running schools will undergo dramatic changes. The apex court upheld the constitutional validity of the Act and directed all schools, including privately-run schools, irrespective of the...

The Supreme Court on Thursday by a majority of 2:1 upheld the constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, which provides for free and compulsory education to children between the age of 6 and 14 years and mandates government/aided/and non-minority unaided schools to reserve 25 per cent of the seats for these children. A Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia and Justice Swatanter Kumar...

-The Hindu   The Supreme Court on Thursday said “every citizen has a right to establish and administer educational institution[s] under Article 19(1) (g) so long as the activity remains charitable. Such an activity undertaken by the private institutions supplements the primary obligation of the state. Thus, the state can regulate by law the activities of the private institutions by imposing reasonable restrictions under Article 19(6).” A Bench of Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia...