-The Indian Express According to sources, the ministry is of the view that it would be easier to replicate such elements in JNVs, which are also residential schools. These schools, run by the Centre, provide quality education to talented students from rural areas, selected through an entrance test. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has advised the HRD Ministry to include elements of military schools (Sainik Schools) — aimed at promoting discipline, physical...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Parliamentarians, even those from the BJP, have been dragging their feet for the second year in a row over adopting villages in their constituencies (or states) under the Pradhan Mantri Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana. Over a quarter into this fiscal, only 40 of the 788 MPs have identified gram panchayats for adoption under the programme, which mandates them to develop these villages into "model villages" for others to...

-GovernanceNow.com The cost of maintaining our 5.3 million stray cattle comes to about Rs 30,115 core per year A lot of debate that we witness in the media on the cattle question these days suffer from the disease of speculative utopian imagination of a ‘cow-nation’ and relentless abuses for those beef-eating ‘others’.   Political debates over the question of our bovine stock has mostly been heavily polarising and mindlessly simplistic, notwithstanding exceptions like veteran...

-The Hindu Business Line Vikram Agnihotri can drive a car with his feet Vikram Agnihotri, 47, of Indore has no hands but he drives a modified Maruti Celerio AGS (automatic gear shift); on September 30, 2016, he got his permanent driving licence from the Indore RTO. He has since driven over 22,000 km without an incident and is the chauffeur for his proud parents. His rare achievement will soon earn him an...

-The Indian Express Punjab’s unique cattle breeding-cum-milk sale dairying model is under threat from gau rakshak activism and the Centre’s new animal trading rules. Randhawa and Gill are amongst Punjab’s many dairy farmers who have made the state into a major supplier of not just milk, but also milch animals. Gurdaspur (Punjab): “When there’s no land in our name, how would we now buy or sell cattle? Are they saying we...