A sustainable population stabilisation strategy needs to be embedded in a rights-based and gender-sensitive local community needs-led approach. An authoritarian top-down target approach is not the answer. The evolution of government-led population stabilisation efforts in India goes back to the start of the five year development plans in 1951-52. A national programme was launched, which emphasised ‘family planning' to the extent necessary to reduce birth rates to stabilise the population at...

The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has asked the schools to scrap the entrance tests for admissions The government’s special schools have discovered that their selection process is in direct violation of the Right to Education (RTE) Act, which stipulates that entrance tests are illegal up to class VIII. The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs), a special group of 594 schools across India, have conducted two rounds of “selection tests” to...

Even as the government is contemplating bringing in a new law to deal with the spurt in honour killings, reports by human rights organisations show that cold-blooded murders in the name of saving family pride had been prevalent in many parts of the world. Honour killings have been rampant in orthodox and socially backward groups in many countries including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories, they say....

The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed. There was irony in the timing of the petrol price decontrol order. The decision, which also covered major hikes in diesel and kerosene prices, and affects hundreds of millions of people, came even as Manmohan Singh advised world leaders in Toronto on the need...

They express shock at reports that it has been finalised Discussions still on to decide the final shape of Bill Recommendations made to NAC “non-negotiable” Even as the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) is holding consultations with a cross-section of civil society groups to evolve consensus on the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, so that their suggestions can be incorporated in the final text, before it is brought...