Special Focus: Why My Domestic Help Would Rather Send Her Kid To A Private School Than Public School?

My domestic help Ruksana has a seven-year-old daughter and a four year-old son. She enrolled them in a private school in the neighbourhood instead of the government primary school. Reason: No proper food, education and facilities. 

At the government school she could benefit from the Right to Education (RTE) Act which guarantees eight years of free, quality education to all children aged six to fourteen years. Instead, she shells out nearly Rs 800 a month for fees plus a good chunk on miscellaneous – books, uniforms, school activities, etc.

Focus: Where Are The Free School Textbooks For Children?

By Rati Kumar in Bhopal

In August last year, the a vernacular newspaper reported from Varanasi, that none of the students of class I, II and III had school text books. The whole of July had gone by without anything being taught in schools and the students spent most of their time playing. Varanasi is just as an example; the situation across the country is equally disappointing.

According to the Right to Education (RTE) Act 2009, every child in a primary school should have text books available on time i.e. at the beginning of the academic year. But the reality is far from what the Act stipulates. In fact, most children do not receive school books and even those who do, don’t necessarily get all the books and rarely at the beginning of the academic year.

Special Report: Worshiped Inside Temples, But Mistreated Outside: The Fate Of Captive Elephants In India

WEEKEND KA TADKA: I recently visited a popular south Indian Lord Ganesha temple, Kottarakara Sree Maha Ganapathy Temple. What struck me besides the scorching summer heat, was the horde of devotees thronging the sanctum sanctorum with fervour. Murmured chants and prayers lent an other worldly feel to the atmosphere. Having sought my share of the Lord’s blessings, I ventured outside to explore the premises of the temple.

Outside the main entrance stood an elephant tethered to a tree, flapping its ears serenely, munching palm leaves and bananas. It was a majestic creature, easily the largest I had ever encountered, with its long trunk and gleaming tusks. A small crowd of excited onlookers watched with awe and took pictures from all possible angles.

Special Report: India’s Socio-Economic Census Threatens To Exclude Crores Of Poor From Social Schemes!

The census says 9 out of 17 crore rural households face no 'deprivation' despite living in extreme poverty. If the government follows this definition, all these people will be left out of country’s social safety net.

The findings of the Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 have been long awaited by academics and politicians alike. Now that they are out, there is a fear that they could end up being used to exclude crores of people from the country’s social safety net.

Crime Fighters: CBI Officials Turn Into 'Bhakts' To Nab Fraudster BLiving As 'Sadhu Badrinath'

By Alok Kumar

Interestingly the accused was located by the probe agency after it learnt about a suspected Facebook profile by the name Swami Durgesh Mahraj, which was believed to be run by the accused himself.

A man living as a sadhu at an ashram located right opposite to the historical Badrinath Temple of Uttarakhand, was finally arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation after absconding for over 12 years.

Interestingly the accused was located by the probe agency after it learnt about a suspected Facebook profile by the name Swami Durgesh Mahraj, which was believed to be run by the accused himself.

Alert: Is Yasin Bhatkal Planning To Escape From Hyd Jail?

By Abdul Rehman

SECURITY ALERT: World's notorious terrorist outfit, Indian Mujahideen's co-founder, Yasin Bhatkal, who is lodged in the high security Cherlapally central prison in Hyderabad, dropped a major bombshell when he reportedly told his wife that he would soon be out of jail with the help from Damascus.

According to intelligence sources, they had this information a couple of days back and it is said that the first information in this regard had come from New Delhi. It is learnt that the security agencies had kept a tab on the phone of Bhatkal’s wife Zahida.

Alert: Is Islamic State Helping This Terror Accused 'Yasin Bhatkal'? Why He Phoned His Wife From Hyderabad Jail?

TOP STORY: In a major breach in a high security prison at Hyderabad,  it has been found that  Yasin Bhatkal has access to a phone and has been making calls to his wife Zahida. One of the calls made by the former Indian Mujahideen chief was intercepted by security agencies.

Bhatkal is reported to have told his wife that he will be out of prison soon and with help from Damascus. The mention of Damascus, a Syrian city under Islamic State siege, hints at the involvement of the dreaded terror group. However, the authenticity of Bhatkal's claims are questionable at the moment and security agencies don't see too anxious about them either.

Focus: Why We Adopted The System Of 'Cheating' Today?

By Ragini Khanna in Delhi

A frustrated aspirational society is linked to upsurge in foul exam means. Based on compelling evidence of widespread cheating in the 2015-16 All India Medical Examinations held last month, the Supreme Court recently ordered the Central Board of Secondary Education to conduct a retest. Earlier in March, Indian and foreign media featured prominently parents and relatives scaling school walls and buildings, to pass answer chits to students taking secondary school examinations in Bihar.

Return Of The Scandals: How PM Modi Escape From Here?

By Newscop
Group Managing Editor

ANALYSIS: Reinforcing the standard narrative of the Modi campaign, he used a phrase that has stayed in memory – how BJP would provide ‘probity in public life’, as opposed to the UPA which was marked by scams after scams.

A few days before the final phase of Lok Sabha elections in 2014, the entire BJP top brass had shifted to Varanasi to muster up support for Narendra Modi’s election bid. In a private hotel, Amit Shah could be seen with two mobile phones, micro-managing the constituencies; sympathetic columnists made themselves home in the war-room tracking social media; and BJP senior leader Arun Jaitley agreed to hold an impromptu press conference.

Special Report: MHA - A 'Ministry for Hounding Activists'?

By Kajol Singh in Delhi

The recent government crackdown on Greenpeace in particular, and the activism sector in general, reeks of arbitrariness and illegitimacy in a scathing critique, INNLIVE quotes. The question is will the people give in to the state’s tactics?

Civil society organisations are gearing up for possibly one of the most important struggles of resistance since the Emergency in the mid-1970s. 

At stake are the democratic freedoms of speech, dissent and association, all guaranteed to us in one way or the other by the Constitution of India, and all threatened by a government that wants to brook no challenge to its agenda.

Political Controversy: Will BJP Sacrifice Sushma Swaraj And Vasundhara Raje To Maintain Party's Clean Image?

By Piyush Sharma in Delhi

The party came to power promising a clean government. The Lalit Modi affair has pushed it into a corner.

As the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is still struggling to deal with the political fall-out of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s move to obtain UK travel documents for the fugitive businessman Lalit Modi,  the party was hit by a fresh political storm on Tuesday evening.

This time the spotlight is on BJP’s  Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje , whose proximity to Lalit Modi was well-known till the she decided to distance herself from the sacked chairman of the Indian Premier League.

'Aam Sakita Likita, Likita Sakita' - The 'Mango Addiction'

Written by Reema Subia

When the magnificent Amaltas tress blossom iridescent yellow on Delhi's Shantipath and street vendors dole out irresistible KalaKhattas to harrowed pedestrians like there's no tomorrow, I know it's time to prepare for the king's arrival. The doorbell of my Chanakyapuri flat rings and I rush through the verandah to receive a sticky wooden carton sent by my grandfather. 

As the parched delivery boy gulps down down his glass of nimboo pani, his eyes smile with amusement as he notices me levitating in the sweet, aphrodisiacal smell of the parcel's contents.

Book Review: 'Who Stole My India' Written By Amit Reddy

Amit Reddy was probably born in the wrong place. Even his mother thinks so when she says, ‘You should go away to America, You are nothing like Indian.’ As Reddy finds it difficult to understand and live a life that his society and surroundings expect him to, and unable to comprehend the diktat of a Hindu Indian society, he decides to fix the problem. The way he decides to do it is by travelling across the country to discover its soul, and perhaps discover his own soul that might fit within an Indian context.

As he puts it, “It’s all so frightfully confusing, but I intend to rectify this situation. The plan is ingenious, and quite simple. I’m going to explore India like few people ever have, by taking an inordinately long journey around the country; 40,750 kilometers long, to be precise… If everything goes accordingly, by the end of this journey I hope to be the complete Indian.”

Analysis: Has Nestle Product Maggi's 'Taste Bhi, Health Bhi' Betrayal Broken Our Good Indian Hearts?

It won’t even take two minutes to figure out that lead in your Maggi is the least of India’s food safety problems. This is a country where two dozen children died in one fell swoop after their free lunch at school – rice, beans, potato curry and soy balls. 

The delicious street chaat Delhi is famous for could be contaminated with fecal matter, the E. Coli bacteria in particular. Where the Most Probably Number (MPN) of coliform bacteria should be 50 or less, it was as high as 2,400 in some of those delicious snacks. 

Special Report: Brain Behind Modi's 'Chai Pe Charcha', Coins 'Nashte Pe Charcha' For His Rivals

On April 8, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was busy launching Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana in New Delhi, a few kilometres away his chief strategist and blue-eyed boy Prashant Kishor was busy in a presentation. 

The power-point presentation 'Citizen's Alliance' was for Modi's key opponent Nitish Kumar's election campaign for the upcoming Bihar assembly elections. The state is slated to go for polls in September-October this year.

'Muslims Donate Land To Build World's Largest Temple'

Muslims in Bihar, in a stellar demonstration of communal harmony, have donated land to help build the world's largest Hindu temple which will have the capacity to seat a staggering 20,000 people.

"Muslims have not only donated land, they have also provided land at a nominal rate for construction of the world's largest Hindu temple.

'Higher Education' In India Is On The Brink Of Collapse!

A series of hastened ‘reforms’ are putting the very foundations of our public higher education at the brink of collapse. Last November, UGC had sent guidelines forcing all universities to implement the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) from the 2015-16 academic session. 

It has now been followed by a ‘Make in UGC’ approach (very much on the lines of Modi’s ‘Make in India’) of preparing centralized syllabi for undergraduate courses, with universities being given just 20% deviation while preparing the syllabi.

Thoughtless Vandalism: Bihar's Heritage Urdu Library Ransacked, Thousands Of Books Thrown In Ganga River

Thousands of precious old Urdu books from a library in the Bihar district of Munger were thrown into the river Ganga in an incident that the district administration says was an attempt by a local businessman to encroach on the heritage building built to commemorate the massive earthquake that devastated Bihar in 1934.

“The library had more than 12,000 Urdu books and most of them belonged to pre-Independence days,” Mohammad Farooq, the library secretary, told INNLIVE over the phone.

Special Report: 'Muslim' Names Road Signs 'Defaced' In Delhi And Suburbs, Hindu Outfits Takes Responsibility

In a dramatic move, the Hindu Outfits Group (joint action commitee) president Rajinder Singh said around 170 members, in three teams, carried out the entire defacing the muslim names road signs“operation”.

Signages of roads named after Muslim personalities such as Emperor Akbar and Firozshah, among others, were found defaced late Wednesday. The names have been blackened and posters of right-wing group — Shiv Sena Hindustan — were pasted on them.

The Vicious Consequences Of Child Marriage Are Beyond!

For some of us, the whole concept of child marriage exists only in TV shows, or in some faraway land. For us, ‘Balika Vadhu’ is just that – a television show. The reality of this seldom strikes.

Honestly, caught in the rigors of everyday life, I sometimes forget how privileged I am. It is in these moments that I then sit down and crib about my privileges. I cry about having to travel for two hours to reach college, having to manage my own monthly budget.