-The Economic Times   As the government gears up for a year-long campaign to spread awareness about the Right to Education, a report on teaching and learning in rural India finds that progress in learning ability of students has not been commensurate to the massive investment in primary education and increase in enrolment. The study conducted by the ASER Centre, a network of civil society organisations LED by Pratham, in collaboration with...

When Munni arrived in this fertile, sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she imagine she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had faiLED to find wives. "My husband and his parents said I had to share myself with his brothers," said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village...

-PTI   The trustworthiness of the administration among tribal population is “very low” due to unresolved land issues that have LED to escalation in Maoist menace, Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh said here on Saturday. Issues such as forcible eviction of people for land acquisition for projects, unsettLED rehabilitation packages, degradation and unproductivity of land given to the poor have aggravated the Maoists’ menace in the Central and Eastern parts of...

-The Hindu   The controversial decision earlier this month by the Academic Council of Delhi University to drop A.K. Ramanujan's celebrated essay on the Ramayana, Three Hundred Ramayanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translations from the B.A. History (Honours) course has evoked sharp protests from several historians and other scholars. Coming three years after the Hindutva student body, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), vandalised DU's History department to protest against the...

Even as the number of crib deaths reported from the state-run Dr. B.C. Roy Postgraduate Institute of Paediatric Science since Tuesday has risen to 13 (with one baby dying on Thursday), the Health authorities said there were no instances of medical negligence. Those who died were all very vulnerable and it would have been nearly impossible to save them. No negligence or any other reason was found that might have LED...