-The Hindu Students in government schools in Assam study only for two-and-a-half hours every day at the primary level compared to five-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours in the rest of the country, an official study has shown. Similarly, the total number of working days in primary schools each year is 180 in Nagaland and Manipur and a maximum of 253 in Bihar and Jharkhand with lower than average literacy rates. But in most...

-The Hindu There are now as many as 9,000 Indian medical students in China As the costs of a medical education in India continue to rise, an increasing number of students are heading to foreign shores, with China, in particular, emerging as a favoured destination. A six year-education at an approved Chinese medical university, consultants say, can cost Rs. 25 lakh, including one-year internship and annual travel to India, although costs vary at...

-The Hindu Chennai: In a move to usher in more transparency in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) will evolve standards to audit the scheme in 2.5 lakh villages, said ICAI president, Subodh Kumar Agarwal on Friday. Briefing reporters, he said ICAI would evolve a standardised procedure as the auditing of the MGNREGA scheme was unstructured one. He also urged the Centre...

-The Statesman GUWAHATI, 7 MAY: Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), a New Delhi-based rights body, has come out strongly against the Delhi University (DU) for its decision to introduce compulsory Hindi and other Modern Indian languages (MIL) in its courses without assessing the ground reality and urged the University Grants Commission to intervene with the famed university "to halt the four year undergraduate programme and not to introduce compulsory MILs...

-The Times of India To the Government of India, Members of the Judiciary, and All Citizens, One of the most disastrous consequences of the strife in the tribal areas of central India is that thousands of adivasi men and women remain imprisoned as under-trials, often many years after being arrested, accused of 'Naxalite/ Maoist' offences. The facts speak for themselves. In Chhattisgarh, over two thousand adivasis are currently in jail, charged with 'Naxalite/Maoist'...