The British boarding school remains cruel

"While condemning global injustices against children, we overlook the ethics of removing seven-year-olds from their families."

Texas appears to believe in neither forgiveness nor redemption. Last week, The Guardian revealed the extent to which it has criminalised its children. Police now patrol the schools, arresting and charging pupils as young as six for breaches of discipline. The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : The British boarding school remains cruel.

Yet most of them have committed no recognised crime. As one of the judges who hears their cases explained, “If any adult did it it's not going to be a violation”. The law permits people to do things to children that they could not do to adults.

'A case of the haves and have yachts'

"A Conservative Minister, close to Prime Minister David Cameron, suggested that the country, teetering on the edge of a new recession, its politics racked by 2.5 million unemployed people and harsh public spending cuts, give Queen Elizabeth II, one of the world's richest women, a gift of well, er, a yacht.

The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : 'A case of the haves and have yachts': And no ordinary yacht: a $90 million, high-masted, oceangoing yacht with staterooms and polished brass and a crisply uniformed crew to pipe Her Majesty aboard."

Prime Minister strongly supported the idea of a new royal yacht but one, they noted with a wary eye to the public gallery, that would be financed by private donations and that could double as a training ship for naval cadets from underprivileged backgrounds. The queen said nothing..!

Teachers have to balance demands from various quarters: Howard Gardner

"‘Parents should avoid positive and negative narcissism. The challenge is to watch your children very carefully, see what interests them, and find ways to help them.'"

After challenging certain conventional notions of education with his ‘Theory of Multiple Intelligences', renowned developmental psychologist Howard Gardner, Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has been involved in areas such as design of performance-based assessments, education for understanding and the quality of interdisciplinary efforts in education over the past two decades.

In this interview he speaks on some current trends and contemporary challenges in the sphere of education The Hindu : Opinion / Op-Ed : Teachers have to balance demands from various quarters: Howard Gardner.

Prof. Gardner says the best educational systems in the world are the ones that make heroic efforts to provide a quality education for every child.

West's romancing of the Taliban

"People of Afghanistan will pay the price for the West's looming deal with the Islamic Emirate it destroyed after 9/11."

11 years ago, the United States went to war in Afghanistan, promising to free its people from a despotic Islamist regime. President George Bush never delivered on his promises of reconstruction. The Hindu : Opinion / Lead : West's romancing of the Taliban:

Now, even the political promise is vanishing: the U.S. is spearheading an effort to make peace with the Islamists it promised to free Afghanistan from.

The General and the labyrinth

"A brave and highly decorated officer, General Singh is recognised as a brilliant strategist and a reform-minded leader who is tough on corruption, as reflected in the hard line he adopted against erring officers in the Adarsh Cooperative Housing Society scam.

The mudslinging and insinuations intended to portray him as someone fiddling with his birth date to hang on to the power and privileges of high office must be rejected with contempt." The Hindu : Opinion / Editorial : The General and the labyrinth

Rather than fight for a bad cause in the highest court in the land, a disputation that could have a bearing on the Army's morale, the government should backtrack and come up with a constructive solution.

Polio – the fight must go on

Though no Indian child was recorded as having fallen victim to the disease in the past year, India cannot lower its guard in the matter of immunising its children against polio for a considerable time to come.

This article discusses the challenges and the endgame in polio which needs a carefully planned strategy. The Hindu : Opinion / Editorial : Polio – the fight must go on

The goal of freeing ourselves from all polio viruses can be achieved only by resolutely following a clear, well-considered strategy.

An imbalance to address

"The government has attributed the weakening of the rupee against the dollar in recent weeks to the reduced inflow into and occasional outflow of foreign portfolio investment from India’s equity markets. "

This article discusses as to why this argument is not convincing. The Hindu : Columns / Chandrasekhar : An imbalance to address: "India cannot continue to rest purely on the benefits it has hitherto derived from the exports of software and IT-enabled services. An effort to realize at least a part of the manufactured export competitiveness that liberalization was supposed to deliver, but did not, is crucial."

Revenues from remittances or the export of labour services cannot be the mainstay of the balance of payments of a modern nation.

Complainant's rights...

Do the complainants of a case always get a fair trial...???

As customary as it is that the accused should get a fair trial, so should the complainants...

Feels, Rakesh Bhatnagar...

It is unfair to deny effective legal aid to victims of crime...

I don't remember...

Are you middle aged?

Are you forgetting thing very quickly...?

A new research shows that memory loss can begin as early as 45 years of age...!!!

Patralekha Chatterjee shows us the bright and darker sides of the fact...

It's the memory loss, stupid!!!

For all the cricket followers...

It may be the umpteenth time when the Indo-Aus series disaster has been discussed in the newspapers but it is still going strong among cricket followers...

Here is a different view...

Have our Indians really done enough for the adulation they receive...???

Deepak Lokhande questions it...

Find new love, our beloved game is dead...

Low inflation will drive bond rally...

Arjun Parthasarthy, an editor for the website www.investorsareidiots.com analyses the effects of the inflation results for Dec '11...

Low inflation will drive bond rally...

Yashwant Sinha says BJP is "70% pure", but still a party with a difference

Times View - Talk professionalism, not purity


Counterview - Power-seekers must be pragmatic


-The Times of India, January 17, 2012

Making a splash

All's well that doesn't end up in a backyard well


Making a splash

-The Times of India, January 17, 2012

Mamata Versus The Rest

Trinamool grapples with imagined adversaries instead of focussing on governing Bengal


Mamata Versus The Rest

-The Times of India, January 17, 2012

Sun, Sand, Sunburn

Even in Goa, girls don't just want to have fun


Sun, Sand, Sunburn

-The Times of India, January 17, 2012