-PTI Stoking controversy, the Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal banned English and mass-circulation Bengali dailies at state-sponsored and aided Libraries but in a damage-control exercise late tonight said the order was being changed to include more newspapers.  The order by the state government evoked criticism from Trinamool ally Congress, Left parties and the intelligentsia which said the decision was "undemocratic, undesirable and worse than censorship." A demand for withdrawal of the...

A directive by the West Bengal Government to State Libraries and those sponsored by it to subscribe only to newspapers specified by it has raised the hackles of the Left parties as well as certain civic rights activists. A circular issued by a Special Secretary of the Government directs the Libraries to purchase only eight newspapers as specified by it. It provides the names of five Bengali newspapers, two Urdu and...

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act (RTE), in effect since April 2010, was a much debated piece of legislation, which, not surprisingly, came under attack from various quarters. Proponents of ‘low-cost’ private schools felt that it imposed an unnecessary burden in terms of infrastructural norms on schools.  Since 2010, Assessment Survey Evaluation Research (Aser) has reported compliance on many RTE norms, such as those related to school...

Thousands of undergraduate women students of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) may finally be able to access the university library — after a struggle spanning several decades.   While students enrolled in professional courses are allowed to use the resources of the Maulana Azad Library (MAL), which is one of the best Libraries in the country, those in non-professional courses can’t go past the MAL gates. Union HRD Minister Kabil Sibal on Wednesday assured...

The scheme seeks to add a superstructure of digital empowerment without laying an adequate foundation Until recently, S. Dhibeka, 16, who had never used a computer until she chose the computer science stream last year at the aging, leafy Kakkalur Government Higher Secondary School near Chennai, could practise programming for only an hour or two a week, often sharing a desktop computer with one or more of her classmates. But since September,...