-Frontline In Rajasthan, the abysmal state of school education has forced pupils, particularly girls, to come out in protest against the shortage of teachers and lack of infrastructure. IT was just over a year ago, on Gandhi Jayanti 2014, that girls of the senior secondary school of the town of Bhim in Rajasthan went on strike. The young, fresh-faced and neatly groomed girls were far removed from anyone’s idea of potentially rowdy...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: For many women in uniform, it will be back to "classes" from police stations. Around 2,000 lady police officers across the country will be given policing lessons with special emphasis on gender laws in a first-of-its-kind training programme designed by the National Commission for Women (NCW) and the Union home ministry. "Most policewomen, who are among the first approached in cases of violence against women, don't know the laws...

-The Hindu Bhaurao Karhade, who considers Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali his cinematic Bible, sold five acres of farmland to make a rustic and gutsy Marathi film, Khwada. One of the important turn-of-the-century developments has been the democratisation of cinema. The steady spread of cine literacy, the strong influence of moving images combined with an easier access to technology and emerging online exhibition platforms has meant that potentially anyone who dreams of making...

-Hindustan Times Amisha Paswan, an otherwise quiet and shy girl, is pretty articulate when she spells out her career plans. “I want to become a doctor and cure poor people,” she says in fluent English. Amisha loves to read fairy tales but her own life is the tale of a girl trying to succeed despite the many disadvantages that comes with being born into extreme poverty. As we speak to her on...

-The Hindu Forced dietary restriction has no place here. In the current battle for Bihar, caste has emerged as a more potent weapon than religion. There may be some churning among urban youth on caste-based quotas, their stated views depending not just on whether they have benefited from the present system but also on how they wish to be perceived — as pragmatic or forward-looking?. But cutting across the urban-rural divide, slicing through...