Private coaching constitutes a significantly large portion of the expense students incur on education, sometimes even bigger than the expenditure on school fees, a study says. In Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka, school students who go for tuitions spend more on private coaching than the average school student does on all items including school fees, transport, books and stationary and uniforms. These are the findings of a in 2007-08 National Sample Survey Organisation...

I remember being disturbed enough to stop watching the 2003 Hindi movie Matrubhumi(motherland). Set in the future, it depicted an Indian village populated only by men. It gets that way after a man, yearning for a boy, publicly drowns his newborn girl in a vat of milk, sparking a custom that wipes out women. So the men watch porn, fornicate with farm animals. A father marries his five sons to...

A 'savage preference for males' leads to the killing of 7 lakh girls by their parents in the mother's womb each year in India, according to a National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) member. NHRC member Satyabrata Pal also said that 25 percent of the children who see the light of day are underweight at birth, and 1.72 million children die before they turn one. 'The UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund) fears 2,000...

At a time when parents are miffed by the “dictatorial” attitude of school managements, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is all set to give more teeth to parents’ associations. The latest move is the brainchild of CBSE chairperson Vineet Joshi, aimed at involving parents in core issues of the schools’ administration including controversial fee hike and admission procedures. The board has recently asked all its affiliated-schools to strengthen its parents’...

Twenty-two villages around the proposed site for the 9900mw Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project (JNPP) on Monday decided to boycott all educational institutes in the area for the next two days as a form of protest against the state’s propaganda in favour of the project. The villagers allege that the Ratnagiri district administration is forcing teachers from Zilla Parishad (ZP) schools to promote the JNPP by visiting the home of every student. “The...