Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) contribute to improve the competitiveness of the international markets within the European Union, EU, and strengthen the economic and social development of its countries. The aim of this paper is to analyze the infrastructure policy promoted by the EU. To that end, we describe and assess both the planning process of the TEN-T, and the financial instruments implemented by the EU to foster them. In the last decades some steps have been conducted to improve the EU infrastructure policy. However, these measures have not been sufficient to ensure the devel- opment of such infrastructures. In order to solve this problem, in the future, the EU should play a greater role in developing cross-border infrastructure. ; Las redes transeuropeas de transporte (RTE-T) contribuyen al buen funcionamiento del mercado internacional dentro de la Unión Europea y a reforzar la cohesión económica y social. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la política de infraestructuras de la Unión Europea, tanto la pla- nificación de las RTE-T como los instrumentos financieros previstos para su desarrollo. En los últimos años, la Unión Europea ha adoptado medidas que contribuirán a mejorar la política comunitaria de infraestructuras; sin embargo, esas medidas no son suficientes para garantizar el desarrollo de estas infraestructuras. Es necesario que la Unión Europea adquiera más competencias en el desarrollo de las infraestructuras transfronterizas.
Las redes transeuropeas de transporte (RTE-T) contribuyen al buen funcionamiento del mercado internacional dentro de la Unión Europea y a reforzar la cohesión económica y social. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la política de infraestructuras de la Unión Europea, tanto la pla- nificación de las RTE-T como los instrumentos financieros previstos para su desarrollo. En los últimos años, la Unión Europea ha adoptado medidas que contribuirán a mejorar la política comunitaria de infraestructuras; sin embargo, esas medidas no son suficientes para garantizar el desarrollo de estas infraestructuras. Es necesario que la Unión Europea adquiera más competencias en el desarrollo de las infraestructuras transfronterizas. ; Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) contribute to improve the competitiveness of the international markets within the European Union, EU, and strengthen the economic and social development of its countries. The aim of this paper is to analyze the infrastructure policy promoted by the EU. To that end, we describe and assess both the planning process of the TEN-T, and the financial instruments implemented by the EU to foster them. In the last decades some steps have been conducted to improve the EU infrastructure policy. However, these measures have not been sufficient to ensure the devel- opment of such infrastructures. In order to solve this problem, in the future, the EU should play a greater role in developing cross-border infrastructure.
The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE) Act 2009 came into force in 2010 (Article 21A of the Indian Constitution), making the 'right to education' a fundamental right for children between 6 and 14 years of age a reality. To ensure the implementation of the Act, the parliament gave timelines to the government to execute all its provisions (in terms of infrastructure etc. till March 2013 and for regularising and training all teachers till March 2015). Despite multiple limitations, the civil society welcomed this long-awaited right and converged collectively, becoming a strong voice demanding the right to education in its true spirit. Apart from strongly lobbying for its implementation, it worked overtime to take this right to the people, generating awareness about the justiciability of the Act. Ten thousand grass-roots organisations, activists, educationists and teacher's associations came together and formed the 'Right to Education (RTE) Forum' to collectively take forth their efforts to the people across the country. The RTE Forum started mass awareness campaigns, advocacy and stocktaking conventions (of the implementation of the RTE Act), both at national and State levels, along with generating its own report on the status of implementation of the Act. Presently, the RTE Forum is working across 18 states. The status reports prepared by the Forum highlight the gaps in implementation, loopholes and challenges, which are shared with the concerned officials from time to time. This article is based on the fourth-year status report of the RTE Forum, which was presented in the 4th Stocktaking Convention held in Delhi in March 2014, reviewing the status of implementation of the Act one year post the first deadline. The report highlights the apathy and the casual approach of the State towards its commitment of ensuring the right to education for the children. Unfortunately, only 10 per cent schools in the country are compliant with all the norms of the RTE Act.
La Red Transeuropea de Transporte (RTE-T) constituye una de las iniciativas más ambiciosas de la Unión Europea (UE), tanto por la magnitud de los objetivos perseguidos como por la escala de actuación y la elevada inversión económica que supondrá su materialización efectiva. Sin embargo, el programa de RTE-T no deja de ser un producto refinado derivado de la ya clásica relación de causalidad establecida entre transporte y desarrollo económico, binomio que permite justificar políticamente los grandes gastos en infraestructura. Además, el diseño actual de la RTE-T puede acentuar más que mitigar las disparidades regionales, siendo por tanto discutible su contribución al objetivo de la cohesión económica y social. La próxima ampliación de la UE debería abrir el debate sobre el futuro de la RTE-T, impulsando un nuevo modelo de red que no traslade al este del continente los impactos negativos conocidos y posibilite a largo plazo un cierto reequilibrio territorial de Europa.The Net Transeuropea of Transport (RTE-T) one of the most ambitious initiatives in the European Union constitutes (UE), so much for the magnitude of the objectives pursued as for the performance scale and the high economic investment that it will suppose their effective materialization. However, the program of RTE-T doesn't stop to already be a derived refined product of the classic relationship of established causation between transport and economic development, binomial that allows to justify the big expenses politically in infrastructure. Also, the current design of the RTE-T can accentuate more than to mitigate the regional disparities, being therefore debatable its contribution to the objective of the economic and social cohesion. The next amplification of the UE should open the debate on the future of the RTE-T, impelling a new net model that doesn't transfer to the east of the continent the well-known negative impacts and facilitate long term a certain territorial reequilibrio of Europe.
The importance of education cannot be denied in one's life. It sustains the human values which contribute to the individual and collective well-being. It forms the basis for lifelong learning and inspires confidence to face challenges. It provides the skills to individuals to become more self reliant and aware of right opportunities. It also enhances the ability of individuals to act more responsible and more informed citizens and have a voice in politics and society, which is essential for sustaining democracy. It is essential for eradicating poverty and it allows people to be more productive and playing greater roles in economic life and earning a better living. The education is the key which allows people to move up in the world, seek better jobs, and ultimately succeed in their lives. So education is very important, and none should be deprived of it. The importance of primary education has been neglected by India since independence knowingly or unknowingly. However, Government of India now is willing to improve primary education by bringing legislation i.e. Right to Education. The paper tries to bring out the meaning of much awaited Right to Education (RTE) 2009, act and tries to bring out the critical appraisal of the Act after three years since its passage.
Despite the refrain that India's statutory rights suffer from weak enforcement, little academic attention has been paid toward the role of grievance redress mechanisms that are crucial to rights enforcement. This article undertakes a systematic policy analysis of the grievance redress system under the Right to Education (RTE) Act at the level of both design and performance by illustrating it through the Karnataka example. Our findings show that the redress procedures under RTE in Karnataka are perplexing and poorly designed and have not led to enforcement of the right. With faltering administrative accountability, many complainants find themselves with unresolved grievances leading to unenforced or improperly enforced rights. Significant changes in the law and a substantial redesign of institutions are vital for effectively enforcing the RTE.
The creation, development and maintainance of educational portal (Rte-Extremadura.org) of the Autonomous Government of Extremadura (Spain) is presented. The portal is addressed to the educational community and interested citizens, and its aims are to provide a global vision of the activities and initiatives and a meeting point among education professionals, parents and students; to study the actions and policies being developed and their legal background; to offer teaching resources of interest to the educational community; to disseminate and channel information and communication on information technologies (IT) between Extremadura and the rest of the world; to promote IT training and application in the classroom; and to promote the use of the IT in the region, through collaboration among its various sectors and institutions. A basic structure has been created so that users can include their own contents through a form. In order to achieve this a structure has been made available that enables people to activate any kind of resource or content, which they consider to be of interest to the community they addresses. The most dynamic, user-friendly and high-speed system for organizing, including and finding information has been sought, based on relational databases. A normalization and evaluation committee will be established to ensure the suitability and selection of the resources ; Se presenta la génesis, desarrollo y mantenimiento del portal de la Educación (Rte-Extremadura.org) del Gobierno Autónomo de Extremadura (España), dirigido a la comunidad educativa y a los ciudadanos interesados. Sus objetivos específicos son proporcionar una visión global de las actividades e iniciativas y facilitar su seguimiento, ser un punto de encuentro e interacción entre los agentes educativos de la región (personal docente, padres y alumnos), investigar las acciones y políticas que en materia educativa se están desarrollando y los marcos legislativos en que se amparan, construir un espacio virtual de recursos didácticos de interés para la comunidad educativa, difundir y canalizar la información y comunicación sobre el uso de las tecnologías de las información y la comunicación (TIC) en Extremadura y el resto del mundo, fomentar actividades de formación en TIC para su posterior aplicación en el aula, y promover el uso de las TIC en la región mediante la colaboración de sus distintos sectores e instituciones. Se pretende crear una estructura básica que posibilite a sus usuarios insertar sus propios contenidos para hacerlo lo más participativo e interactivo posible mediante un formulario de alta de recursos. Para ello, se ha buscado un sistema de organización, inclusión y localización de información lo más dinámico, fácil y rápido posible, sustentado por bases de datos relacionadas. Para velar por la calidad de los contenidos, está prevista la creación de un comité de normalización y de evaluación. (A)
rail gauge; railroad; border effect; Russia; dicontinuity; european integration; transport corridor, TEN-T ; National audience ; L'article cherche à montrer que la gestion de la différence d'écartement ferroviaire entre le système russe et le système standard européen, relevant a priori de choix techniques et normatifs, fonctionne en fait comme un révélateur efficace des relations inter-étatiques aux marges orientales de l'Europe. En effet, la géographie de ce contact porte en elle l'histoire des basculements géopolitiques successifs du siècle passé, mais elle peut aussi s'interpréter dans une perspective eurasiatique à la lumière de l'évolution en cours des grands équilibres commerciaux et politiques. Dans cette perspective, l'infrastructure est alors autant révélatrice de données géopolitiques que la réponse à de réels de transport.
rail gauge; railroad; border effect; Russia; dicontinuity; european integration; transport corridor, TEN-T ; National audience ; L'article cherche à montrer que la gestion de la différence d'écartement ferroviaire entre le système russe et le système standard européen, relevant a priori de choix techniques et normatifs, fonctionne en fait comme un révélateur efficace des relations inter-étatiques aux marges orientales de l'Europe. En effet, la géographie de ce contact porte en elle l'histoire des basculements géopolitiques successifs du siècle passé, mais elle peut aussi s'interpréter dans une perspective eurasiatique à la lumière de l'évolution en cours des grands équilibres commerciaux et politiques. Dans cette perspective, l'infrastructure est alors autant révélatrice de données géopolitiques que la réponse à de réels de transport.
rail gauge; railroad; border effect; Russia; dicontinuity; european integration; transport corridor, TEN-T ; National audience ; L'article cherche à montrer que la gestion de la différence d'écartement ferroviaire entre le système russe et le système standard européen, relevant a priori de choix techniques et normatifs, fonctionne en fait comme un révélateur efficace des relations inter-étatiques aux marges orientales de l'Europe. En effet, la géographie de ce contact porte en elle l'histoire des basculements géopolitiques successifs du siècle passé, mais elle peut aussi s'interpréter dans une perspective eurasiatique à la lumière de l'évolution en cours des grands équilibres commerciaux et politiques. Dans cette perspective, l'infrastructure est alors autant révélatrice de données géopolitiques que la réponse à de réels de transport.
The Mediterranean corridor stands at the meeting point of a Spanish railway project in the 1920s and a second project which has formed part of the Trans-European Networks of Transport since the 1990s. The subject is thus this coastal axis, including cities, activities and infrastructure. The bottom line is the idea that the Mediterranean corridor has to be placed in a territorial context that is plural. Indeed, it is both perennial, within the scope of the long-term timeline of the construction and planning of the Spanish territory, and evolving within the political temporality of the planning process and its successive stages. It also has an inherent multiscalar component due to the institutional process and to its impact on the territory. Our hypothesis is that in Spain the corridor involves an interaction with the political and economic questions, so that it cannot be simply considered as a transport project (yet not materialized by infrastructure), and should rather be tackled through its political dimension. Right at the meeting point of these stakes, we have chosen to use a territorial approach, contrary to the majority of works that have been dedicated to this subject. This territorial angle makes it possible to study the Mediterranean corridor through its spatial dimension, taking into account both the economic and political questions that shape the corridor in its territorial aspect and the various implications of the project on this territory at all scales. This thesis develops two main ideas. The first ambition of this work is to understand how this project, which began as a plan for infrastructure as part of a decision-making process regarding spatial planning, then became a powerful factor in the rearticulation of the roles of the different stakeholders and the reinterpretation of the paradigms of planning at all scales. We will then be able to investigate the dialectics between the various institutional levels on the one hand and between the various territorial scales (European, national, regional and local) on the other hand. The integration of the project within the territories can be performed through different forms of territorialisation, both material and immaterial, from the construction of railway equipment to the rearticulation of the roles of the stakeholders within a given territory. We therefore witness a double process of politisation of the local interests through the action of business associations at the regional level, and depolitisation of the debate about the corridor as the project reaches a European level. Three key outcomes emerged from this work based on a methodology relying mainly on interviews as well as the study of planning documentation and the manifestations of the Mediterranean corridor in the public debate. The first idea is that, given its plasticity, the corridor becomes indeed a political subject: it is both a project for infrastructure with evolving characteristics and a catalyst gathering different interests around a common objective. Secondly, as it corresponds to different territorial representations and objectives, the Mediterranean corridor cannot be materialized as infrastructure because this materiality would deprive it from its role as a federator of interests and would therefore destroy the fragile unity that was made possible by its claim. This inherent material impossibility of the Mediterranean corridor is at the same time a fundamental component of its position as a mediator between the different stakeholders. Finally, being at the centre of a territorialisation process that is indeed plural, the Mediterranean corridor echoes all three meanings of this concept: it is one of the avatars of the major European and Spanish spatial structures; it is also a factor of the emergence of new territorial structures at a local scale; and it allows a reorganisation of the interactions of the different stakeholders around a project, within its very own spatial manifestation ; Le « corridor méditerranéen » est à la rencontre d'un projet ferroviaire espagnol datant des années 1920 et d'un projet inscrit dans la planification des réseaux transeuropéens de transport depuis les années 1990. La thèse s'intéresse à l'axe littoral qu'il désigne, comprenant des villes, des activités et un ensemble d'infrastructures. Elle part du constat que le corridor méditerranéen doit être inscrit dans un contexte territorial multiple. Il est pérenne par son inscription dans le temps long de la construction et de l'aménagement du territoire espagnol, mais changeant dans la temporalité politique de la planification et de ses phases successives. Enfin, il est multiscalaire par son inscription dans le jeu institutionnel et ses impacts territoriaux. Nous faisons l'hypothèse qu'en Espagne, le corridor méditerranéen interagit avec les enjeux politiques et économiques, au point qu'il ne peut être considéré comme un simple projet de transport (pour l'heure non matérialisé par une infrastructure), mais doit être envisagé dans sa dimension politique. À la croisée de ces enjeux, la thèse prend le parti d'une approche territoriale – à la différence de la majorité des travaux – qui permet d'aborder le corridor méditerranéen sous l'angle de son inscription dans l'espace, en prenant en compte aussi bien les problèmes économiques et politiques qui façonnent le territoire du corridor en amont que les implications du projet sur ce territoire à toutes les échelles en aval. La thèse pose deux questions centrales. Il s'agit d'abord de comprendre comment un objet, au départ un projet d'infrastructures inscrit dans un processus de prise de décision en matière d'aménagement du territoire, devient un facteur puissant de recomposition des jeux d'acteurs et de réinterprétation des paradigmes de l'aménagement des territoires à toutes les échelles. Il s'agit ensuite d'interroger la dialectique entre les différents échelons institutionnels d'une part et entre les différentes échelles territoriales (européenne, nationale, régionale et locale) d'autre part. L'inscription du projet dans les territoires peut se faire à travers différentes formes de territorialisation, matérielles ou immatérielles, de la construction d'équipements ferroviaires à la modification du jeu des acteurs dans un territoire donné autour du projet de corridor. On assiste à un double processus de politisation des intérêts locaux par l'action des associations d'entreprises au niveau régional, et de dépolitisation du débat sur le corridor par le biais de l'européanisation du projet. En s'appuyant sur un ensemble de méthodes fondées principalement sur la pratique d'entretiens, ainsi que sur l'étude des documents de planification et des manifestations du corridor méditerranéen dans le débat public, cette thèse a permis de faire émerger trois résultats principaux. Premièrement, par sa plasticité, le corridor méditerranéen devient un objet politique : il désigne à la fois un projet d'infrastructures aux caractéristiques mouvantes et un catalyseur d'intérêts de nature différente autour d'un objectif commun. Deuxièmement, le corridor méditerranéen, parce qu'il correspond à des représentations territoriales et à des objectifs différents, ne peut s'incarner comme infrastructure car sa matérialité lui ôterait son statut de fédérateur d'intérêts et détruirait l'unité fragile créée autour de sa revendication. Cette impossibilité du corridor méditerranéen est ce qui en fait un excellent médiateur entre les différents acteurs. Troisièmement, le corridor méditerranéen est au centre d'un processus multiple de territorialisation, répondant aux trois sens de ce terme : il apparaît comme un avatar, parmi d'autres, des grandes structures spatiales européennes et espagnoles ; il est un facteur d'émergence de structures territoriales nouvelles par ses impacts sur les territoires locaux ; il permet la recomposition du jeu des acteurs autour d'un projet, dans une réalité spatiale qui lui est propre
