Dispur has decided to set up a children welfare trust to adopt a holistic and comprehensive policy for physical and mental wellbeing of every child living in Assam. The trust will be headed by chief minister Tarun Gogoi and include personalities like industrialist Ratan Tata as its member. The government will formally float the trust on November 14 on the occasion of Children’s Day. Health and family welfare minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told...

The state government has decided to ask private schools to furnish details of their accounts to stop them from indiscriminately hiking fees. Although all private schools will be required to reveal the data, the government’s focus is on English-medium institutions as they have been frequently accused of raising fees arbitrarily. The state education department will soon send a circular to nearly 500 private English-medium schools — both unaided and partially aided (those...

The state government will require an additional 43,500 primary school teachers to implement the right to education (RTE) Act, 2009, in schools managed/aided by the government and civic bodies, a preliminary report by the state primary education department has revealed. Under the act, every child between 6-14 years of age will be provided eight years of elementary education in an age-appropriate classroom in his/her neighbourhood. According to the primary report prepared by...

Inefficiency, the global financial meltdown and rising food prices have conspired to reverse progress made on poverty and hunger Head out of Delhi, across the fetid Yamuna river, with the tourist sites behind you and the northern Indian plains in front of you. Go past the new, luxury flats built for the Commonwealth Games, turn right and follow the lines of the new metro and then plunge left, avoiding the chaotic...

Chezi K. Ganesan looks every inch the high-tech entrepreneur, dressed in the Silicon Valley uniform of denim shirt and khaki trousers, slick smartphone close at hand. He splits his time between San Jose and this booming coastal metropolis, running his $6 million a year computer chip-making company. His family has come a long way. His grandfather was not allowed to enter Hindu temples, or even to stand too close to upper-caste...