-The Hindu Hassan (Karnataka): Though officials of the departments of Public Instruction, and Women and Child Development may be enthusiastic about setting up pre-primary centres (Makkala Mane) to attract children to government schools, it has attracted the ire of anganwadi workers. With the setting up of these centres, anganwadi workers have to look after lower kindergarten classes aside from implementing the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). The Makkala Mane centres were set up...

-The Hindu Manoharpur (Jharkhand): Deep inside the Saranda sal forest, Thalkobad lies at the core of what was a CPI (Maoist) "liberated zone" in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district along the Odisha border. Thalkobad, along with 24 other villages, was reclaimed by the Indian state after a massive military operation - Operation Anaconda-I in August 2011 to destroy the CPI (Maoist) Eastern Regional Bureau and several training camps inside Saranda. The village...

-The Hindu The rationale behind the Union government's decision to extend for four more years the Integrated Action Plan for naxal-affected districts in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, is clear enough. So is its timing, coming as it does days after the Maoist rampage in Chhattisgarh. Out of an annual allocation of Rs. 1,000 crore, each of the 82 districts identified...

-The Hindustan Times Betul: She lives in a shanty in Jaiprakash slum area, Betul. The shanty is adjacent to highway as well as railway track and, therefore, throughout the day she had to put up with sound of heavy vehicles or the trains as she studied for her high school examination. But, such detractions were too small against her willpower and she stood first in the merit list. Meet Poonam Ghore, daughter of...

-Frontline The Central government's proposal to hand over the supply of supplementary nutrition to NGOs in the name of "community participation" is surely an invitation for private profiteering on the back of this supposedly public scheme. ENSURING safe and healthy conditions for the reproduction of the population is obviously the most fundamental requirement of any society. So the progress of a society can be determined (and indeed is routinely judged) by the...