PRIMARY SCHOOLING: I Pratichi Trust (India) was established a decade ago, along with its sister across the border, Pratichi Trust (Bangladesh) [1]. The Bangladesh centre has been concentrating on the social progress of girls and young women there (it has worked particularly on supporting and training young women journalists reporting from rural Bangladesh), whereas here in India, the work of the Trust has been mainly focused on advancing primary education...

A report card from Pratichi Trust on the primary schooling scene in West Bengal Pratichi Trust (India) was established a decade ago, along with Pratichi Trust (Bangladesh). The latter has been concentrating on the social progress of girls and young women: it has worked particularly on supporting and training young women journalists reporting from rural Bangladesh. In India, the work has mainly focussed on advancing primary education and elementary health care,...

The concept of a “parallel” school for children from “weaker sections” of the society evoked strong words of reproach from the Delhi High Court on Wednesday as it pulled up Sanskriti School, primarily catering to children of senior bureaucrats, for making sub-classes even in education. “What do you mean by a parallel school?” a Division Bench of Chief Justice A P Shah and Justice S Muralidhar asked. “The children of...

Paul A. Samuelson (May 15, 1915 — December 13, 2009) has often been described as the foremost academic economist of the 20th century. Randall E. Parker, the economic historian, has called him the “Father of Modern Economics”. All this may be hotly disputed in Chicago, but in any case, Samuelson was the first American to receive the Nobel prize in economic sciences. The Swedish Royal Academy’s citation stated that he...

A professor in formal attire, driving his own Beetle to the sprawling Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus and turning up in class to “open up visions of his students” — that’s how Bengal finance minister Asim Dasgupta remembers his teacher, Paul A. Samuelson. Samuelson, who helped form the basis of modern economics, died yesterday at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts, after a brief illness. He was 94. “He was a...