'The uneducated think of their rights as a gift. This is deeply troubling.' 'If they were educated they could claim what is rightfully theirs.'
'Elections are fought to win.' 'In our party, the leadership takes the final decision, and our leaders are very clear about it.'
Two years after a midday meal took the lives of 23 children in Gandaman, Archana Masih sits down to have lunch at the same government school and discovers that much has changed and much remains the same.
Rediff reader Tauseef Quasim from Abu Dhabi (UAE) writes about her sister.
Shops, schools and other commercial establishments were closed in parts of Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab but the shutdown call by anti-reservation bodies had little impact elsewhere in the country.
Many places in Bihar face 20-hour power cuts everyday. Nearly half of rural Bihar has not even been electrified. But if Gyanesh Pandey has his way, the entire state will light up in the next few years. He shares his plans with A Ganesh Nadar
The Congress on Tuesday suffered a major upset in Himachal Pradesh at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Rajya Sabha elections which were marred by cross-voting in all the three states though it won three seats in Karnataka while the saffron party pocketed an extra seat in Uttar Pradesh.
Briefing reporters at his office, Army Day Parade Commander Major General Salil Seth said, "Artificial Intelligence is being used for the first time to identify the best marching contingent. As you know all the marching contingents do drills and do drills correctly."
The orders under Section 144, Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), will remain in force for a month in Kishtwar and for 15 days in Ramban district of Jammu, an official spokesperson said on Saturday. In Bihar, the administration imposed Section 144 of CrPC in Sheohar, Banka, Gopalganj and Samastipur districts on Saturday.
People, cutting across all ages and from all walks of life, turned up to pay tribute to the child at the school where she was a student till Thursday.
Vijay Prakash, principal secretary in the state Planning and Development Department, told rediff.com that the decision came following complaints by teacher organisations and educational experts stating that engaging teachers in works outside their school was hampering studies
Fourteen-year-old Adarsh Singh, son of Bihar Cooperatives Minister Jai Kumar Singh, was found in an unconscious state on August 20 evening in a hostel room. His father alleged that he was harassed in school and suspected foul play.
Hundreds of school children in Patna on Saturday skipped lunch as a mark of protest against the abduction of a Delhi Public School student.
Ranjan Kumar, a student of Diamond Public School, was suspected to have been kidnapped on January 28.
Facing the ire of people over the midday meal tragedy, the Bihar government plans to provide printed instructions to school principals about food quality and safety besides painting the norms on the schools walls.
'For Nitish Kumar the message is to be democratic. With the support of the BJP, he had suppressed criticism in Bihar. He would also need to change his highly authoritarian way of governance.' 'The Grand Alliance, given the decisive mandate in its favour, cannot afford to fail the people. They have a duty to make it a model for the rest of India,' says Apoorvanand.
On Monday, August 29, a court in Saran, Bihar, sentenced the headmistress of the school where 23 children died after eating a mid-day meal to 17 years in prison. Three years after that tragedy, discovers Satyavrat Mishra, the state government has failed to learn its lessons.
The work will finish by end of the year.
Under attack from the opposition over the death of 22 school children after consumption of mid-day meal at Saran, the Bihar government on Wednesday said it suspected a conspiracy behind the tragedy.
A substantial number of castes and groups are already placed in the reserved category, getting about 52 per cent of reservations altogether. It would be completely inequitable to place the Maratha community in the Other Backward Class (OBC) category, it said.
14-year-old Nilesh was abducted by gunmen from Balwahat Azaar on September 28 while on his way for tuition. The kidnappers chopped off the boy's head and threw the body in the ditch on Monday morning.
Ravi Kant, a student of Class IX in DAV Public School in Biharsharif town in Nalanda district, was kidnapped when he was going to board the school bus on Monday.
The students from the Government Boys' Senior Secondary School in Deoli area were immediately taken to the Madan Mohan Malviya Hospital, after they reported feeling nauseous and complained of acute pain in their stomach and head post consuming the meal.
About 1.82 lakh people have been evacuated to safe places by the rescue teams in last 48 hours.
After 10 years of inaction where no new schools were opened and no teachers recruited, one of the best indicators of a changing Bihar is a group of girls cycling to a government-run school.
Manoj Baitha had sustained injuries on his hand after his vehicle rammed into a wall after ploughing through a group of school children, killing nine of them
Rahul Bedi tells the story of Bihar's 'untouchable' Musahar community, which is slowly, but steadily rising to its feet, with the help of J K Sinha, a former intelligence officer and a Good Samaritan. He has built a modest residential school that offers their deprived youth not only free and competent education, but also self esteem.
In an attempt to revamp its image as people friendly, the Bihar police have re-launched its campaign to enroll underprivileged children to government schools.
As many as 27 children of a government school fell ill and were taken to hospital on Thursday at Hajipur in Bihar's Vaishali district after eating mid-day meal in which a dead lizard was found later.
The book, according to Kumar, is likely to be completed by July-August 2016.
Craze for Bihar's Super 30, an innovative free coaching centre for IIT joint entrance examination, is such that thousands of students drawn from different parts of Bihar ignored 'Bharat bandh' and appeared for its entrance test in Patna on Thursday.
Sources said that the chapter on Lalu, titled Mitti ke Gaurav (pride of the soil), will be removed from the Hindi textbooks for class VIII from the academic session beginning in April. Instead of a chapter dedicated to Lalu, students will now read about the life and work of Mahatma Phule, a social reformer and educationist of the 19th century.
Earlier, The Nitish Kumar government had banned sale and consumption of country and spiced liquor in rural areas from April 1 this year, but had allowed sale of foreign liquor in towns and cities.
The man was caught from near the Aluva bridge on Thursday evening where he was drinking alcohol. The suspect attempted to escape from the police by jumping into the nearby river and swimming away, but was caught with the help of local residents and pulled out of the water.
Fear of kidnappings has returned to haunt people of Bihar after the bodies of a boy and man, who were abducted, were found near Patna on Friday.
Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi had to abruptly stop his campaign speech at Turkaulia in East Champaran district and move to another venue after authorities demanded to see the permission letter for holding the meeting at a school ground on Wednesday.Modi was scheduled to address the meeting at the grounds of a government high school at Turkaulia to canvass for Bharatiya Janata Party nominee Krishnanandan Paswan and had arrived as per schedule by helicopter.
The flood situation in Bihar remained grim on Monday with more than 10 lakh people affected and thousands forced to flee their homes and take shelter on highrise embankments, national highways, railway lines and in schools and other buildings
Tejashwi's parents Lalu Yadav and Rabri Devi have 11 children and all his siblings were married before him.
Kislay has returned safely to his Patel Nagar residence, Senior Superintendent of Police N H Khan said.
The reason behind the suicide was yet to be ascertained as no suicide note was found, police said.
