-Down to Earth More than a fourth of rural students opt for private schools for better education, says Annual State of Education Report by non-profit Pratham The Union government may have made right to education a fundamental right by bringing into force the Right To Education (RTE) Act of 2009, but government schools are lagging far behind in providing quality education, according to the latest report released by Delhi-based non-profit, Pratham. At...

-The Telegraph JAMshedpur: Residents of 23 villages in Seraikela-Kharsawan have alleged that Kandra-based thermal power plant Adhunik Power and Natural Resources Limited (APNRL), which started production over a year ago, is ruining their lives with the toxic fly ash it generates, creating yet another conflict between industry and community. The Adhunik power plant, located at Padamdih village in Kandra along Tata-Kandra road, only 15km from JAMshedpur, commissioned its first two phases of...

-The Times of India Silently, the warp and weft of Indian families is changing, perhaps forever. Women are getting married later, they are having babies later and the gap between successive children is getting larger. Put this together with the fact that the average number of children born to a woman continues to decline, and children survive more than in the past, and you can see that families are being much...

-Economic and Political Weekly     The pace of decline in infant mortality in India has quickened in recent years after the introduction of the National Rural Health Mission. However, the post-neonatal deaths have declined faster than the neonatal deaths despite the emphasis on preventing the latter in the health mission. Apart from a number of reasons, this is linked to the poor quality of the public health services in general, and the...

-The Alternative Parveen Kumar works in the farms of Uddhampur District, JAMmu & Kashmir, where the Government has posted him on a project that allots about 100 to 200 hectares of land each to grow and train farmers in organic cultivation. Parveen grows wheat, maize and pulses in the 100 hectares that he is in-charge of. Crops are chosen by the government after analysing the market demand in the area. Thus,...