Ticket to ride for female literacy across India

May 22, 2012

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Rampur Singhara, May 22: The daily trip to high school was expensive, long and eventually, too much for Indian teenager Nahid Farzana, who decided she was going to drop out. Then, the state government gave her a bicycle.

Two years later, she is about to graduate from high school and wants to be a teacher.

The eastern state of Bihar has been so successful at keeping teenage girls in school, the bike giveaways have spread to neighbouring states. Now the Indian government wants to expand it across the country in hopes it might help improve female literacy.

Before starting the programme in 2007, officials in Bihar, one of India's poorest and least developed states, despaired over how to educate the state's females, whose literacy rate of 53 per cent is more than 20 points below that of its males.

Dropout rate

"We found that the high school dropout rate soared when girls reached the ninth grade. This was primarily because there are fewer high schools and girls had to travel longer distances to get to school," said Anjani Kumar Singh, Bihar's principal secretary overseeing education.

Poor families could not spare the money for transport, or were reluctant to let girls travel so far away, fearing for their safety.

The programme was an instant success, with the number of girls registered in the ninth grade in Bihar's state schools more than tripling in four years, from 175,000 to 600,000.

"The results are remarkable. The school dropout rate for girls has plunged," says Singh.

In her crisply starched blue tunic uniform and white scarf, Farzana appears a carefree teenager, proud to have made it into the tenth grade. But she almost did not make it.

Her daily bus fare of 15 rupees (Dh0.99) to the new high school 6 kilometers from their home in Rampur Singhara village was an additional burden her father, a car mechanic, could not afford.

"I wouldn't have been able to keep Farzana in school for long," said Mohammad Shiraz Ahmad, her father.

A teacher told them about the free bicycles, and Farzana applied for the 2,500 rupee (Dh165) grant to buy the bike.

"The bicycle has changed everything," Ahmad said.

In remote villages, gaggles of school girls can be seen jauntily cycling to school.

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Agencies
April 23,2020

New Delhi, Apr 23: Delhi Police has booked Jamia students Meeran Haider and Safoora Zargar under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in a case related to communal violence in northeast Delhi over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, said a lawyer.

Haider and Zargar, arrested for allegedly hatching a conspiracy to incite the communal riots in February, are in judicial custody. While Zargar is the media coordinator of Jamia Coordination Committee, Haider is a member of the committee.

The police has also booked Jawaharlal Nehru University student leader Umar Khalid under the UAPA in the case, said advocate Akram Khan who is representing Haider in the case.

Haider (35) is a PhD student and the president of RJD youth wing's Delhi unit, while Zargar is an MPhil student of Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) university.

In the FIR, the police has claimed that the communal violence was a "premeditated conspiracy" which was allegedly hatched by Khalid and two others.

The students have also been booked for the offences of sedition, murder, attempt to murder, promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and rioting.

Khalid had allegedly given provocative speeches at two different places and appealed to the citizens to come out on streets and block the roads during the visit of US President Donald Trump to spread propaganda at international level about how minorities in India are being , the FIR alleged.

In this conspiracy, firearms, petrol bombs, acid bottles and stones were collected at numerous homes, the FIR claimed.

Co-accused Danish was given the responsibility to gather people from two different places to take part in the riots, the police alleged.

Women and children were made to block the roads under the Jafrabad metro station on February 23 to create tension amidst the neighbourhood people, it said.

Over 20 film personalities, including Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bhardwaj, Mahesh Bhatt and Ratna Pathak Shah, on Sunday had released a statement raising their voice against the arrest of the students and activists by Delhi Police for protesting against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and demanded their release.

Following this, the police had said investigations into the JMI violence and northeast Delhi riot cases were done impartially, and arrests were made after analysis of forensic evidence.

In December last year, the police had allegedly entered the JMI campus after protests over the CAA, being held a few metres away from the varsity, turned violent.

Rajya Sabha MP and RJD leader Manoj Jha had tweeted, "Delhi Police called him for investigation and then received orders from above and arrested Meeran Haider, who has been helping people during the time of coronavirus outbreak."

The Jamia Coordination Committee (JCC), a group comprising students and alumni from the varsity, had condemned the arrest and demanded his immediate release.

"The country is facing a massive health crisis, however, the state machinery is busy harassing and framing student activists in false cases to suppress voices of dissent," they said.

The JCC said Haider was diligently working to provide ration to the needy during the lockdown. Communal clashes had broken out in northeast Delhi on February 24 after violence between citizenship law supporters and protesters spiralled out of control leaving at least 53 people dead and around 200 injured.

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News Network
January 24,2020

Kochi/Mumbai, Jan 24: Two students who recently returned from China have been kept under medical observation at the Ernakulam Government Medical College here for possible exposure to the coronavirus, an outbreak of which in China has triggered a global health scare.

Reports from Mumbai said two persons there too have been put observation at the civic-run Kasturba Hospital in Chinchpokali, PTI reported.

Health officials said no cases of the deadly infection have been detected.

One of the students being screened in Kerala and both being screen in Mumai have reported symptoms such as cold and fever and has been kept in isolation wards.

The additional district medical officer of Ernakulam, Dr S Sreedevi, said samples of the student’s body fluids would be sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune for tests.

The youngster consulted a doctor at a private hospital and was referred to the Ernakulam hospital in the wake of the virus outbreak in Wuhan city of China.

A stringent screening system has been set up at the Kochi International Airport to screen passengers who have been in the affected province in China. Persons who have been to Wuhan and showing symptoms of cold, cough and fever are being immediately shifted to the Ernakulam hospital.

All quariantine facilities have been put in place there including an isolation ward and a ventilator.

The other person under observation in Kerala is an MBBS student from Kottayam district who recently returned from his college in China. The district medical office said she has no health issues. She was put under observation as a precautionary measure.

In Mumbai, 1,789 passengers have undergone thermal screening at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport for the coronavirus since January 19.

Coronavirus cases were first reported from Wuhan, the capital of central Chinas Hubei province in China.

In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak in China, doctors at international airports have been asked to screen travellers for symptoms if they are returning from China. All private doctors have been asked to alert the authorities if they observe symptoms of the coronavirus.

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News Network
February 18,2020

New Delhi, Feb 18: Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot is the richest minister in the AAP government, according to a report released by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) on Monday.

In a statement, the NGO said, Delhi Election Watch and ADR have analysed the self-sworn affidavits of all the seven-party leaders including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

According to the statement, the minister with the lowest declared total assets is Gopal Rai with assets worth Rs 90.01 lakh.

"The minister with the highest declared total assets is Kailash Gahlot from Najafgarh constituency with assets worth Rs 46.07 crore," it stated.

The report by ADR comes on the day Kejriwal and his six ministers took charge after the formation of the new AAP government.

Chief Minister Kejriwal and his cabinet colleagues took charge of their respective offices on Monday and asserted that they would work to fulfil the promises made in the "guarantee card", released during the poll campaign, including reduction in pollution and expansion of metro network.

Members of his Cabinet are -- Manish Sisodia, Satyendar Jain, Rajendra Pal Gautam, Imran Hussain, Gopal Rai and Kailash Gahlot.

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