-Reuters On a hot afternoon, a bright orange bus drives into a slum area of the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, parking amidst shelters made of tarpaulins and bits of wood. Barefoot children come running, eyes shining, and troop inside.  It's a school on wheels that brings education to the doorstep of disadvantaged children such as these every day, halting for several hours at a time in different parts of...

By the end of this year, one in every 10 Indians will be an Internet user, making the country the third-largest Internet market in the world after Chinaand the United States.  At the end of December, 121 million Indians will be accessing the Internet at least once a week to check emails, chat or log on to a social network, a survey has found. India is adding Internet users at the...

Nothing straight can ever emerge from the crooked timber of a parochial mind. Those responsible for the decision to drop A.K. Ramanujan’s essay on the Ramayana from Delhi University’s undergraduate Arts course argue in substance that from childhood these students are told about the sacred character of the epic. This is why it occupies a special place in the Indian psyche. Its characters are perceived to be divine creatures. To...

'Economic growth will need massive energy. Will we allow an accident in Japan, in a 40-year-old reactor at Fukushima, arising out of extreme natural stresses, to derail our dreams to be an economically developed nation?' Every single atom in the universe carries an unimaginably powerful battery within its heart, called the nucleus. This form of energy, often called Type-1 fuel, is hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times more powerful...

It has to be but a means to development, not an end in itself Is India doing marvellously well, or is it failing terribly? Depending on whom you speak to, you could pick up either of those answers with some frequency. One story, very popular among a minority but a large enough group—of Indians who are doing very well (and among the media that cater largely to them)—runs something like...