-The Hindu Launched in 2006 by the JD(U)-BJP government at the time, the scheme provided money to all girls who enrolled in Class IX through their schools to buy themselves a cycle. The first independent, scientific evaluation of the impact of Bihar's cycles-for-girls programme has shown that the scheme significantly improved female school enrolment and substantially reduced the gender gap in secondary school enrolment. The study, by Karthik Muralidharan, an economist at...

-The Times of India LONDON: London School of Economics' Ideas for Growth conference on Monday hailed the Bihar government's 'bicycles-to-girls' policy as one that can be imitated globally. Bihar witnessed a 30% increase in school attendance by girls in just one year, thanks to the bicycles policy. With a high school dropout rate among girls, the state government had rolled out the policy under which every 14-year-old schoolgirl was given money to...

-The Hindu The power of the bicycles to confer economic and social freedom even in the age of the automobile remains undiminished. Bihar is using it to cut the dropout rate for girls. Bicycles and safe roads are a winning combination. While she was on her way to school one morning, Smriti's bicycle brushed against a speeding truck, and she fell to the ground. After a few stitches on her injured elbow,...

Bihar Government's programme of distributing bicycles to school girls may be a modest intervention but is leading to big changes. A new research-based paper, brought out in August 2013, corroborates the success of the programme and testifies that it is leading to improved school enrollment of girls and arresting their dropout rates (See links below to read full paper and earlier studies on the subject).   Based on econometric and statistical models,...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Saradha group's collapse has possibly bankrupted lakhs of small investors robbing them of their life svaings, and has rendered thousands of its agents jobless. The scam highlights the failure of the government and its regulatory agencies to reign in the mushrooming chit fund companies in West Bengal. It also brings under the scanner the Trinamool Congress' proximity with the tainted group. In the wake of the...