-The Times of India BERHAMPUR (Odisha): Visually impaired Plus II students can look forward to Braille text books, as well as literary works in Odia, from the next academic year. The Red Cross Braille Press here — the state’s only Braille press, which has been supplying text books to schools for the past 33 years — will be able to print text books for Plus II students thanks to the installation...

-The Hindu Fibreglass avatar used to cut pollution GUWAHATI: Goddess Durga has a fibreglass ‘avatar’ in Mizoram and it has much to do with slaying the demon of ecological degradation. There are very few temples in Mizoram, where 87% of the population is Christian. Of the 13 that are managed by the Central Gorkha Mandir Committee, five are in Aizawl. Until about a decade ago, the Durga Puja celebration in these temples was similar...

-The Hindu The campaign to end open defecation can succeed only if it takes communities with it India’s declaration on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi that its rural areas are now open defecation-free will be acknowledged around the world as a milestone in its developmental journey. Cleanliness and sanitation were central to Gandhi’s concerns for his vast number of impoverished countrymen, and should ideally have been pursued zealously by governments...

-The Hindu Business Line A dispersed pattern of urbanisation leads to sprawl with higher motorisation and pollution. A new urban vision is needed India’s demographic dividend cannot be realised if young entrants to the labour force as well as potential migrants from agriculture do not gain new livelihoods. Hastening of the structural transformation BRIngs with it three mega-challenges for policy-makers: employment of migrants; growing urbanisation; and ensuring better education and vocational training...

-The Hindu Business Line Noted Gandhian economist Dr Sudarshan Iyengar surveys the distressed agricultural landscape, pinpoints its weaknesses, and prescribes solutions with their roots in Gandhian agronomics. Edited excerpts from an interview to BusinessLine: * Given the agrarian crisis in India today, how relevant are Gandhi's economic principles based on the village economy, and equitable distribution of resources? They are relevant in the context of Gandhi's view of gram swaraj (village self-rule), which...