-The Times of India Almost 57 years after it was carved out by merging Telugu-speaking areas and cutting out Marathi and Kannada speaking areas, Andhra Pradesh is now on the carving board again - the Telangana region will now be partitioned off into a new state, induced by a long-standing agitation, but delivered by the political expediency of the Congress. Whatever be the complex electoral implications of this, the real question is...

-The United Nations Violence against children often goes unseen, unheard and unreported the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said today, launching a new initiative urging the international community to speak out more forcefully against the scourge, which leaves millions of girls and boys physically and emotionally scarred every year. "In every country, in every culture, there is violence against children," said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. "Whenever and wherever children are harmed,...

-Live Mint The mid-day scheme is underpinned by a rent-seeking chain that keeps all the major stakeholders satisfied The mid-day meal (MDM) tragedy in Chhapra once again focuses attention on the low-level equilibrium that our public systems are trapped in. Consider these facts. Apart from rice, which has to be collected from the local ration shop, the MDM programme allocates each primary and upper-primary child Rs3.11 and Rs4.65, respectively to purchase pulses,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Easy promotions may lead to poor performance in school, a government committee has found. Class X board results have worsened across the states in the three years since the Right To Education Act stipulated compulsory promotions till Class VIII, a member of the panel told The Telegraph. The act mandates schools to conduct "continuous and comprehensive evaluation" (CCE), which means pupils' scholastic and co-scholastic skills should be assessed round...

-Outlook In the wake of the mid-day meal tragedy in Bihar, Centre has engaged the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to randomly test samples of food served as part of the scheme for quality and their protein and calorie content. In fact, the measure has already been implemented in Delhi and Andhra Pradesh and results are awaited of the first samples collected in the two states. Scientists from CSIR would be...