DesiPundit
Now with RTE, she will have to keep 25% of her so far limited school seats to children from the community for free. She will probably have to increase the class sizes and also the fees to make this viable, affecting the quality of education and the closely nurtured relationships between students and teachers. But it’s not just about the fees. It’s also about academics. My mother tells me that her understanding of the rules is that she will have to give admission to students from poorer families (how poor is defined is not clear) but cannot ask for any documentation for age or academic performance. So basically, a kid from a family classified as poor, can come and ask for admission to any class, but he could be any age, and have passed or failed any exam.
More on RTE by Krupakar.
The middle-finger-u-death response of the ferocious 21 men who bravely held their ground against impossible odds is often held up as the ultimate example of Sikh badassitude, which is really saying something considering that these balls-out Indian hardasses have stories about shit like the dude who ran around pureeing enemy soldiers apart even after being mostly decapitated by a broadsword to the throat. Yet despite this epic showdown being the basis for a national holiday among Sikhs and a valiant, head-cleaving last stand worthy of the Spartans at Thermopylae, this insane tale of 21 warriors going Horde Mode against roughly the entire male population of Central Asia in a single battle remains largely undocumented in Western military histories. This is their tale.
Two years ago, as district collector of Namakkal, he voluntarily declared his assets: a bank balance of Rs 7,172 and a house in Madurai worth Rs 9 lakh. Once, when his baby daughter, Yalini, who had breathing problems, was suddenly taken ill, he did not have the Rs 5,000 needed for admitting her to a private hospital. At that time he was deputy commissioner (excise) in Coimbatore and there were 650 liquor licences to be given out. The going bribe for each was rumoured to be Rs 10,000.
Before Google Earth existed, the slums of Sangli, a city of 550,000 in southwestern India, was acknowledged on government maps by nothing more than some clumsily outlined, empty spaces. But then, from high in the sky, the eye of a satellite saw what no municipal geometer had taken the trouble to show: small islands of huts with dilapidated roofs spread throughout the city.
Thanks to the satellite images available on Google Earth, a full picture of these forgotten slums has emerged. They now have borders; they are mapped; they have an identity. And using these images, Shelter Associates, a Pune-based NGO, has begun rehabilitating the slums. For the first time in their lives, 3,900 families in Sangli are going to be moving into apartments.
We can argue till kingdom come over whether you are rich or middle-class, or we can recognize that some things are objectively determined, while others are a matter of classification. The objective fact is that you travel to work by car while Ambani does by helicopter. Whether your commuting by car makes you rich is a matter of terminology and classification, which may differ from person to person. The criteria for classification shouldn’t be entirely arbitrary – what criteria you use should depend on what you want to measure.
In 2004, for example, items in Rabindranath Tagore’s collection, including his 1913 Nobel Prize for literature, were pilfered from Vishva Bharati University while security guards were supposedly watching an India-Pakistan cricket match.
This is a part of a four-part series in which a historian examines the appalling condition of India’s archives.
Dravid evoked great emotions from not only Indian fans but also fans of the game worldwide. Masuud, our editor from across the border said, that only Dravid can come close to his other revered cricketing gods– Wasim and Lara. Over the last few days we have read multiple tributes about Dravid and we have tried to collate the best ones around and keep them in one place for posterity.
You announced your arrival in this world by screaming and furiously moving your arms and legs. I understand, son. Each life is bookended by two traumatic events – and even though the central character involved in these events never retains memories of them– they define us all. You experienced one such defining moment: the curtains were just raised in an act in which the rest of us only play supporting roles.
A lovely welcome message from a father to his newborn son.
We don’t always need shiny new technology to do amazing things around the world. As this edition of Mobile Message shows, with some imagination everyday technology can be re-purposed to do extraordinary things. Brij Kothari of Planet Read shares how he got Bollywood to marry karaoke, and how it doubled the number of readers in Indian primary schools.
I’m sure everyone in India now knows how to write ‘soniye’ and ‘maahi ve’ :)
Was Basavaraja’s death plain murder or a gruesome enactment of a tantric ritual?
A truly WTF news story.
