Navodaya Vidyalayas will be exempted from the provisions of the Right to Education Act. The two key provisions — no-screening and giving 25% reservation to children from economically weaker section — will not be applicable to 444 Navodaya Vidyalayas across the country. These Schools will be treated as specified category Schools. The HRD ministry had sought the opinion of former Chief Justice of India A S Anand, who said Navodaya Vidyalayas...

Union home minister P Chidambaram remark blaming the spiralling crime graph in the capital on migrant population comes at a time when in most cases, local people are involved and new gangs are emerging in Delhi's crime scene. A look at the statistics available with Delhi Police gives an entirely different picture than what was portrayed by the home minister. More than 83% of people involved in crime this year were...

Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron was all ears when Anand Kumar, who founded Bihar's Super 30 free coaching centre for students, narrated the real life stories of hope that his institute has generated year after year. "Cameron told me it was amazing to listen to my real life stories of hope. He was so impressed that he hinted at using such stories with people across the world," Kumar, who shared the...

An efficient delivery system is essential to keep up the achievements made by Kerala in the social sector over the decades, Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan said on Saturday. "Kerala has achieved remarkable growth in life index compared to many other Indian states. Now it is important that these achievements are maintained by improving the delivery system," he said, inaugurating an international conference on Reaching out to people: Achieving Millennium Development...

Tom Sawyer, the mischievous young protagonist of Mark Twain's 19th century classic, is an unlikely hero for a social activist from rural West Bengal. But Shabnam Ramaswamy, a feisty 55-year-old from Murshidabad, likens herself to Tom Sawyer in more ways than one.  Like Sawyer, who, when given the onerous task of painting a wall, convinced his friends of the importance of his job and had them queuing up to help him,...