-Reuters India is about to hit a milestone in its battle to eradicate the polio virus with no new cases reported in the past year, the country’s health minister said today, a dramatic drop from being the country worst-affected by the crippling disease. The last case was detected on January 13 in a two-year-old girl in Howrah. A full year without any new cases means India will no longer be classed as “polio-endemic”...

The human resource development ministry has asked all states to assess how many additional teachers are required at the secondary level under a new teacher-student ratio worked out for Classes IX and X. The states have also been told to start a mapping exercise to find out the requirement for new secondary schools in every district. Sources said the 1:32 teacher-student formula and the push for new schools were aimed at addressing...

Yesterday was the last day of the Auto Expo 2012 in New Delhi. It should have been the first day of ending our obsession with cars and instead, realise what this fascination is doing to our insides.  Over a decade ago, Delhi was a heroic city. It had successfully reduced air pollution by shifting buses and three-wheelers from diesel to CNG. But now, Delhi's residents are choking again. Recently, this paper...

-IANS Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh), Jan 9: Broken roads and power cuts have failed to deter people in their drive for education in this eastern Uttar Pradesh district. They have set up more than 30 schools and technical institutes for youth of the area. If you drive between Imran Ganj to Guraini in the Shahganj sub-division of the district -- a distance of some 10 km -- you can count about 40 schools...

-The Indian Express   The wife murdered, the husband arrested for abetting the crime, their seven-year-old daughter mired in a paternity dispute. The eldest child, aged 18, has stopped going to college out of fear and ignominy. The other daughter, 15, has been thrown out of school. This is the family of Bhanwari Devi. Or what is left of it. Bhanwari, the auxiliary nurse midwife who allegedly possessed a video of herself with...