-DNA The formation of School Management Committee (SMC) in the primary schools under the Right to Education Act (RTE) is a good idea but lack of any guidance for selection of the members of the committee has raised curiosity among educationists. Such committees are to be formed in 34,000 schools. Educationists working in the field of RTE believe that school authorities include poorly educated parents in the SMC that might not serve...

-The Deccan Chronicle Unrecognised schools across the state have to seek “recognition” in order to admit 25 per cent poor students under the RTE quota. The government will reimburse the amount for the RTE quota only in recognised schools. In Hyderabad alone, the department of secondary education has declared over 300 private schools as “unrecognised” two mon-ths ago, while as per estimates there are nearly 10,000 unrecognised schools across the state....

Rural secondary school students in the Northeast have better reading and arithmetic skills than the rest of the nation, an education survey has revealed, though the numerical knowledge in some states of the region is below the national average. The survey was conducted by volunteers of the Annual Status of Education Report under a Delhi-based NGO, Pratham, for the Union human resource development ministry. Among the Northeast states, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Nagaland,...

-The Deccan Chronicle Army units are currently undergoing jungle warfare training in naxal-affected Chhattisgarh, even as the Union government’s policy of not deploying the Army for anti-naxal operations anywhere in the country still remains in place. The jungle warfare training is currently on at the Narainpur Manoeuvre Range in South Chhattisgarh. In recent years, the Army has been boosting its presence in Chhattisgarh through plans — approved earlier by the Union...

Rudyard Kipling opens his superb novel with the street urchin Kim teasing the son of a wealthy man. Kim kicks Chota Lal, whose father, Lala Dinanath, is worth half-a-million sterling, off the trunnion of the mighty cannon Zam-Zammah. Kipling loved India and wrote that it was the only democratic place in the world. It warms us to read this, but of course this was quite untrue in Kipling’s time and...