A first-year MBBS student at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who hailed from a village in Rajasthan and was the second topper in the Scheduled Tribe category at the all-India medical entrance test, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan of his hostel room on Saturday.  Anil Kumar Meena, 22, was reportedly struggling to cope with the English-medium teaching at the institute. His friends and family...

Kanak Dixit: We have with us Aruna Roy, from Devdungri village in Rajasthan, who has, among other things, been able to take the Right to Information (RTI) from janasunuwais, or public hearings at the village level, all the way to national legislation that encompasses all of India. It is a movement that is truly global in scale. Aruna, a question that has been troubling me quite a bit in the context...

The last eight years have seen a staggering rise in the number of children studying in English-medium schools across the country. Data on school enrolment for 2010-11 shows that, for the first time, the number of children enrolled in English-medium schools from Classes I to VIII has crossed the two crore mark - a 274% rise since 2003-04.  For the fourth year in a row, English is the second-largest medium of...

 Watch a film, get entertained. Well, if it is IIM-Ranchi, you get business ideas, a certificate from the B-school and market linkage from Nabard. Looking to develop reel lessons to transform real-life strugglers into successful managers, IIM-Ranchi is embarking on a unique project — named Barefoot Managers, the premier B-school will develop 15 short films on entrepreneurial literacy and screen one a day in front of semi-literate and low-income groups in...

Meet Vinay Rai, the man who took Google, Facebook and 20 others to court for posting ‘objectionable content’ Sitting in a plush office in Noida, Vinay Rai, 39, says he is a troubled man these days. He claims he does not want to be seen as a social activist fighting for censorship of the internet social network websites and search engines Facebook and Google. He is the one ‘activist’ whose name...