-Live Mint Govt schools in Bihar test grouping children by level of learning instead of age for improving outcomes Jehanabad (Bihar): It's just after breakfast and barefoot children trickle into the classroom. Brightly coloured posters adorn the white walls-the solar system, a counting and phonetic chart, parts of the body, and a portrait of a radiant B.R. Ambedkar, a builder of modern India. It looks like any other government school classroom. But...

-The Indian Express Families have a preferred number of sons at any given fertility level as well as a preferred fertility level.   In his maiden Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lamented the neglect of daughters, restrictions on their movements, parental attitudes that favoured sons, shameful rapes of girls and women, the lack of toilet facilities and sanitation. In a populist vein, he urged parents to treat sons and daughters...

-The Hindu Forest Dept. evicts them from land they cultivated in Dongarampur Raichur (Karnataka): These landless Dalit families are still searching for their land allotted under the Land Ceiling Act. Paramesh, a Dalit farmer from Dongarampur village in Raichur taluk, has been running from pillar to post for the last one year in Raichur to find his 2.26 acres of land that his father Jambappa had been allotted under the Act about...

-Economic and Political Weekly The relationship between depleting water levels and school dropout rates is poorly studied. As chronic water shortages begin to affect more regions of the country, this trend will begin to appear more forcefully. Kishore Jha (kishor.delhi6@gmail.com) is working on child rights with Terre des Homes, Germany. Devender, a 14-year-old boy from Kheeda village in Almora district in Uttarakhand State, studies in Class 8. He spends at least three hours...

-The Indian Express India needs a national effort to speed up human development. That India was ranked 135 out of 187 countries on UNDP's human development index is perhaps the greatest concern for a nation with global ambition. In order to sustain our growth momentum and translate the gains of growth into wellbeing at a faster pace, India needs to rejig its strategy for accelerated human development. The performance in education and health...