India's effective literacy rate has recorded a 9.2% rise to reach 74.04%, according to provisional data of the 2011 census released on Thursday. Even as there was a sense of achievement at the improvement in the literacy rate, questions are being raised about what constitutes literacy and the real import of the continued high gender gap. Literacy rate improved sharply among females as compared to males. While the effective literacy rate for...

A jharkhand High Court whip, issued to the CBI two months back, has put fodder scam cases against former Bihar chief ministers Lalu Prasad and Jagannath Mishra on the fast track. The CBI, which has been handling as many as 53 fodder scam cases for one and half decades, is now under pressure to complete investigations in the 15 pending cases, of which five involve the two former chief ministers and...

The jharkhand Government on Wednesday rushed doctors to Gumla district to verify reports from unofficial sources claiming that three persons had died of smallpox there. According to the World Health Organisation, smallpox was totally eradicated from the world a decade ago. However, a local newspaper recently published a report claiming that three persons had died of the contagious disease here and five are suffering from it. The Gumla Health Department has sent...

The Centre is likely to send a team of experts to jharkhand to monitor the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) that it believes has been taken over by a contractors’ mafia allegedly behind recent murders of an activist and labourer associated with the job scheme. In an exclusive interview to The Telegraph, Union secretary for rural development B.K. Sinha refused to give out names, but insisted that the...

Two weeks after Neyamat Ansari, a close associate of national employment guarantee scheme (NREGS) governing council member Jean Dreze, was beaten to death in jharkhand, the Centre added on Thursday a new section to the act to force state governments to take action against irregularities in the programme. “If the Centre directs the state government for taking steps for effective implementation of the provisions of the act and the states do...