-One World South Asia The mid-day meal tragedy in Bihar has drawn attention directly to the way we articulate and work for educational entitlements, writes Parvinder Singh and Priyanka Sarkar. Lucknow: It takes an informed and empowered community to harvest the fruits of educational entitlements, including non-discriminatory access to midday meals. The promises made in the Right to Education Act can only be wrested as rights when they are owned by the...

-DNA With the union cabinet approving a proposal to amend the RTI Act to keep political parties out of its purview, the controversy about six national political parties having been declared "public authorities" by the CIC has taken a rather serious turn. Political parties, acting though Parliament, are on the verge of undoing a law that Parliament itself had given to the nation. The argument that the law should apply to...

-IndiaResists.com The ongoing debate between two stalwart economists, Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, must be joined by those who understand contemporary realities and challenges in terms altogether different from those of mainstream economists. In a recent (July 27) article in Times of India, Bhagwati's co-author Arvind Panagariya characterizes the differences between the two in the following terms. Sen favours education and health measures as being the first steps to tackle poverty...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami and eight other eminent citizens Saturday filed a PIL in the Delhi high court challenging appointment of Shashi Kant Sharma as Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). The petition has been filed afresh as on July 15 an apex court bench headed by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir, who has since retired, refused to hear it saying, "The high court...

-The Indian Express The recent conviction of eight persons for spreading Naxalism in urban areas of Chhattisgarh again underlines a paradox in the functioning of investigation and prosecution wings of the police. Though the state has consistently topped the chart of Maoist violence across the country, it is yet to secure a single conviction in assault cases. In fact, all the accused even in a high-profile incident like the Tadmetla ambush,...