Taking education to sex workers and prisoners in jail in West Bengal, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) has decided to waive fees for them. “To start with, Ignou has decided to select the red light district of Sonagachi here from where 26 sex workers are likely to join courses on healthcare and food and nutrition programmes,” Ignou vice-chancellor V.N. Rajsekharan Pillai said. He said that the Kolkata Regional Centre would...

For years, they have been waking up early and starting late. But India's northeast, which sees sunrise almost two hours before Mumbai, has decided it's time to set the clock right. The region's demand for a separate time zone has never been more vociferous April is usually the cruelest month for India's northeastern states. Cyclonic storms lash the region with vengeance and rip apart homes and hopes. But in all...

The battle over genetically modified brinjal may resume shortly as an environment ministry agency readies its ammunition against arguments that the vegetable, the introduction of which has been halted by a government moratorium, threatens biodiversity and is unsafe for human consumption. The Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) will be going up against environment minister Jairam Ramesh, who was responsible for the decision to suspend cultivation of Bt brinjal after the panel...

Today, we have reached a historic milestone in our country's struggle for children's right to education. The Constitution (86th Amendment) Act, 2002, making elementary education a Fundamental Right, and its consequential legislation, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, comes into force today. The enforcement of this right represents a momentous step forward in our 100-year struggle for universalising elementary education. Over the years, the demand...

In a thrust to provide sustained support to life-saving innovations in India and around the world, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is placing new emphasis on innovations that effect social and cultural change to bring down the unacceptably high death rates for children under five years of age in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. “A lot of times,” Melinda French Gates, wife of Microsoft founder Bill Gates and co-founder of...