Australian Sports Minister Mark Arbib Wednesday launched a Rs.200 million (Aus$5 million) five-year programme aimed at developing sports facilities at the grassroots for the disadvantaged in India. 'Sports is much more than winning. Its the joy and happiness on the childrens' faces while playing which is the actual winning. Giving opportunities to play to the disadvantaged will help in building self-esteem, confidence and resilience,' said Arbib, who is here for the...

The United Nations marked World Teachers’ Day today with top officials calling on governments to make up a projected deficit of over 10 million teachers by 2015 and stressing the crucial role teachers play in recovery from natural disasters and conflict. “Without sufficient numbers of well-trained and professionally motivated teachers, we risk falling short of the promise made 10 years ago at the World Education Forum to the world’s children and...

The man, who on the eve of India’s independence deliberately opted to study Agriculture Science instead of Medicine, M S Swaminathan, on Tuesday said attracting young minds to farming is the essential for the revival of the sagging farm sector. The Father of Indian Green Revolution said that the challenge before the country is to get younger generation to the fields. This is important to continue the tradition of farming. The 84-year-old...

Trade unions and labour rights activists blame the high suicide rate in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on the practices of the garment industry. TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacturers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of...

VISHAL, the son of a farm labourer in the west Indian state of Maharashtra, is almost four. He should weigh around 16kg (35lb). But scooping him up from the floor costs his nursery teacher, a frail woman in a faded sari, little effort. She slips Vishal’s scrawny legs through two holes cut in the corners of a cloth sack, which she hooks to a weighing scale. The needle stops at...