-The Telegraph New Delhi: Schoolchildren from national boards have outperformed those from the state boards in the first-ever standardised countrywide test of Class X pupils, carried out as part of a sample survey by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT). Students from the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations, which conducts the ICSE exam, and the Central Board of Secondary Education have come out tops while Madhya Pradesh,...

-The Hindu The steps taken towards social democracy are being reversed. What we have now are social insurance policies from above. This subverts the entire project of giving voice to the voiceless. India has paid a heavy price for failing to institutionalise social democracy It is generally agreed that theories of social democracy, in comparison to theories of formal political democracy, take cognisance of background inequalities that hamper the realisation of basic...

-The Hindu The grandiose spectacle that the Art of Living Foundation has organised on a thousand-acre site on the floodplain of a river in Delhi to demonstrate ‘humanitarianism’ and the oneness of cultures will go down as a spectacular example of thoughtless environmental destruction. The Central and Delhi governments have, in a display of extraordinary non-application of mind, allowed a private entity to take over part of the Yamuna floodplain, an...

-The Indian Express Budget 2016 has a greater focus on the rural and social sectors. But the challenge will lie in improving delivery systems. Indian agriculture as well as the rural sector have been in distress in the last two years due to deficit rainfall and the decline in global commodity prices. The rural non-agriculture sector, too, has been under stress due to the lack of demand for manufacturing and services. It...

-FirstPost.com Giant agricultural corporations are seriously impacting the right to food of women, especially in developing countries like India by increasingly suing farmers for breaching patent laws, a UN expert said. “These big companies are suing farmers because the farmers are using (patented seeds) without the permission (from agricultural corporations) or (are not) buying the particular seeds. This is a very serious issue and millions of dollars the corporations are taking from...