-Express News Service   In its bid to push for the inclusion of secondary education till Class 10 under the Right To Education (RTE) Act, the HRD Ministry in its proposal to be placed before the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) meeting next week, has cited examples from around 85 countries ranging from the US to Djibouti and Palestine that have extended the years of compulsory education. It also talks about...

The concept of “a ubiquitous magic plastic” that bring out the unique in a living person has caught the fascination of most of us. An unpopular government sees in it the ability of cutting a long red tape short to correctly identify the genuine citizens in need. The agonised cops of India see in it a great ally to apprehend the much-wanted terrorists, whose biometric data could now be verified...

Dr Binayak Sen has given a double blow to the state administration of Chattisgarh. First, the Supreme Court rejected the sedition charges levelled against him for which the state courts found him guilty. And then he was appointed to the 40-member steering committee on health in the planning commission. The Chattisgarh government has been vocally protesting against Sen's appointment, saying that he still remains a convict out on bail and should...

They may not be in news like their counterparts in Bhatta-Parsaul, but the fight of farmers in Noida against the satellite city Authorityand the UP government is nothing new. It's been on since 1976 when land was acquired for the first time to lay the foundation stone of Noida. And this fight hasn't been completely futile. On July 30, 2010, Allahabad high court directed the Noida Authority to pay reviewed...

In the 1920s, a young Tamil girl sang and starred in her school musical. It was, ostensibly, a private event with few outsiders. Yet so exceptional was her singing that Swadesamitran ran her photograph and wrote about the event. Seeing that photo in the newspaper, her household “was appalled” for, as the music historian V Sriram writes, “good, chaste women never had their photographs published in papers”. Today, this seems like...