The interaction between less privileged and rich students will enrich the experience of both. The Supreme Court recently upheld the validity of Clause 12 of the Right to Education Act that mandates aided and non-aided private schools to reserve 25 per cent of the seats for disadvantaged children in their neighbourhoods. This is arguably a landmark judgement that creates an opportunity, though not a certainty, for rendering school a site of...

Clinging on to their cultural moorings are monks from Assam's Majuli islands who were forced to relocate in the 1970s With land swallowed by the Brahmaputra, many monasteries of Assam's Majuli island were relocated to the mainland in the Seventies. The lives of the monks have never been the same. Indrakanta Mahanta, the head of the Vaishnava sattra (monastery), Bogi Ai, can't remember when somebody last asked him about Majuli. And there...

Overlooked and ignored, the problem of untouchability continues to be practised and perpetrated in the country. It is a lifetime of misery and humiliation, unimaginable for the relatively privileged but a daily reality for over one-fifth of the country’s 120 crore-plus population, as revealed succinctly in 22 short and easy to view videos under the Article 17 Campaign launched on April 14, 2012 by India Unheard, which claims to be...

-The Economic Times Going by the latest report on deforestation in India, we have lost forest area equivalent to more than half of New Delhi or as big as a tier two city between 2007 and 2009 alone. The study conducted by a team of forestry researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore for "Current Science" journal says that massive deforestation has been Masked by Forest Survey of India's afforestation...

-The United Nations The goal of reducing by half the number of people without access to safe drinking water has been achieved, well ahead of the 2015 deadline for reaching the globally agreed development targets aimed at ridding the world of extreme poverty, hunger and preventable diseases, the United Nations said today. Between 1990 and 2010, over two billion people gained access to improved drinking water sources, such as piped supplies and...