54 children eligible for primary schooling from these families prefer private schools Across the country, doors of even private schools are set to open for the weaker sections, thanks to the Right to Education Act, but here is a government primary school run by a local body in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu that does not have a single Dalit student. Even though there are Dalit communities in areas such as Pachayankadu...

As the final bell goes off in my daughter's school, a ripple of anticipation runs through a group of children waiting at the gate. Tiny hands stretch through eager to touch those on the other side. For an instant, a single handshake seems to bridge an insurmountable distance, the meeting of the children of the two Indias: one that is elite, entitled and exclusive and the other that is deprived,...

Money from the Department for International Development has helped pay for a controversial programme that has led to miscarriages and even deaths after botched operations Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men, the Observer has learned. Many have died as a result of botched operations, while others have been left bleeding and in agony. A...

 Poverty could not rein in the spirit of this youth and hold him back from fighting his way through all odds.  Unlike many youngsters in his neighbourhood who had resigned to fate, Monoranjan Bera worked hard to change his destiny. Bera has ranked 50th in the IIT entrance examination to a joint MSc-PhD programme.  Bera, living in a single room tenement at Bhatapukur in Kharagpur, can serve as an example to youngsters.  "One...

What is it that makes the Indian middle class treat their domestic help with such derision and abuse? In her nine years as a nurse working with rescued domestic workers in Delhi, Mariamma K. thought she had seen the worst. That was until 2010, when she and her colleagues went to rescue a 17-year-old girl from a home in west Delhi. Sangeeta was found with bite marks all over her body....