-Tehelka Despite the serious toll it takes on women's health, female sterilisation remains the most prevalent form of contraception in India. While memories of the 21 months of Emergency in 1975-77, imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, survives even today in the minds of Indian men as the fear of forced sterilisation, the country's population control policies have shifted over the years since then to target the politically less...

-Economic and Political Weekly Two years after the Right to Education Act, the government needs to focus on quality. Two years is perhaps too short a period in which to assess how effective the groundbreaking Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 (RTE), which came into effect on 1 April 2010, has been in raising standards of education in a country as diverse as India. The very fact that...

A week after the Union Cabinet gave its nod to a gender empowering legislation that will protect women from sexual harassment at the workplace, another landmark scheme — to provide financial aid to rape victims — could soon be a reality. Decks have been cleared to provide rape victims or their legal heirs with financial aid to ensure "restorative justice" in the form of legal and medical assistance, shelter, counselling...

A help-desk-cum-counselling system is on its way, to help children deal with various emotional issues. All of us feel the blues on certain days. It could be due to various reasons. A fight with your sibling, scoldings from our parents or poor performance in an exam. Sometimes it could be emotional issues of a more serious nature that could even affect our performance at school. Children often find it difficult to face...