-Down to Earth Almost 40 per cent of India's population is minor but the budget allocated to them is a meagre four per cent of the Union budget It was a mid-winter morning when we first met her at the anganwadi centre of Mai, a small village by the bank of the River Ganga in Bihar’s Munger district. The breakfast session at the anganwadi centre was just over, though some of the...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Economic Survey has recommended that biometric tracking of teachers' attendance be introduced in government primary schools and the data monitored by parents and local communities. The Survey has cited the low-learning outcome of children in government schools and linked it to teacher absenteeism and shortage of professionally qualified teachers. According to the UNESCO- EFA (Education For All) Monitoring Report for 2014, teacher absenteeism in India varies between 15...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The mystery behind the outbreak of an unexplained neurological illness in Bihar's Muzaffarpur, which had claimed nearly 100 lives each year till 2014, has been solved. Scientists from the US and India, after a joint investigation, have concluded that consuming litchi --a tropical fruit Muzaffarpur is famous for- on an empty stomach triggers the illness and death. Seasonal outbreak of the mysterious illness, characterised by acute...

-The Indian Express EC had asked the central bank to relax the weekly bank withdrawal limit from Rs 24,000 to Rs 2 lakh for candidates contesting elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur. New Delhi: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has shot down the Election Commission’s (EC) proposal to relax the weekly withdrawal limit for those contesting the Assembly elections, prompting an angry reaction from the poll panel, which...

-PTI AHMEDABAD: A differently-abled farmer from Gujarat's arid Banaskantha district has inspired several others to make the best use of their farmland by planting pomegranate. Genabhai Patel (52), a pomegranate farmer from Sarkari Goliya village in Lakhani taluka of the district, has polio in both legs but he did not let it become a hurdle. Instead, he experimented with farm practices involving drip irrigation to produce pomegranate in the highly arid and...