Private coaching constitutes a significantly large portion of the expense students incur on education, sometimes even bigger than the expenditure on school fees, a study says. In Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka, school students who go for tuitions spend more on private coaching than the average school student does on all items including school fees, transport, books and stationary and uniforms. These are the findings of a in 2007-08 National Sample Survey Organisation...

Action plan should be finalised to end scourge before March 2012 A plan of action should be finalised within a month or so with the target of ending the pernicious practice of manual scavenging within the 11th Plan period that ends in March 2012, sources in the Social Justice Ministry said. This was the key outcome of a two-day consultation meeting which concluded here on Tuesday. Jointly organised by the Ministries of Social...

Women in rural India continue to die because of indifference and neglect by healthcare authorities... This is a public health warning. Do not express concern for the state of healthcare in this country. Do not express anger that women die because they are either denied care or help is delayed when they have complicated pregnancies. Do not demand that healthcare is an entitlement that the poor have a right to demand...

The Election Commission has started a sample survey in five poll-bound states to get an idea of voter attitudes and clear misconceptions to ensure greater turnout at booths. The exercise, being conducted by state chief electoral officers, will be completed within the next three or four weeks before elections are notified in Bengal, Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Commission official Akshay Rout said a similar survey had been conducted in the...

If you thought that globalization and privatization would reduce the glamour and clamour for government jobs, you couldn't be more wrong. The first-ever state-backed study on aspirations and expectations of youth in Karnataka suggest that at least 60% of 14-34 year-olds -- irrespective of their education, economic status and place of study - prefer a government job. Fuelling their aspiration for a government gaddi seems to be job security, which is...